Planetary Vision

Bloody Iraq Campaign Comes to an End

2011-12-18T20:12:00.003+10:00

A tragic and ultimately unproductive nine years of war in Iraq comes to a close. Originally the justification for the war was to stop the development and use of WMDs and for purported links of Iraq to Al Qaeda.

It turned out there were no WMDs and no links to Al Qaeda. Then the justification was shifted to regime change and rebuilding a new Iraq after years of oppression from Saddam Hussein.

But contrary to the hopes many Iraqis had for the US invasion -- that a new, prosperous country could be built -- Iraq is worse off now in prosperity and in stability.

It has been suggested in the media, such as here and here, that there will be a bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in January or February next year. I find that likely and the current military moves are in good time for such.

If so, the Straits of Hormuz will close and oil prices will skyrocket. The fragile economic position of many countries such as those in Europe could be pushed over the edge. There could be a global depression.

From there who knows? You could get another attempt by the UN, such as the recent attempts at the climate conferences, to form a global government. And then the implementation of human population reduction schemes prized by so many in the global elite.

I doubt it will lead to a military World War 3 as some commentators have speculated. Israel will bomb a few military and a few nuclear facilities in Iran and in return Iran will lob a few missile's Israel's way, much like the Iraqis did during Gulf War 1, and possibly up to Turkey as well. The only real way for it to escalate is with increased interest from Russia and China.

It could be that Israel will take all the military duties on themselves. Therefore the US could claim that it's not them doing this. It would make it difficult for Russia or China to justify an intervention that involved attacking the US, when the US is just an "innocent bystander". (Of course the US will be in fully in the know if Israel's attack does go ahead.)

Fox analyst Ralph Peters was interviewed on US Fox news and said that the US withdrawal was "Iran winning". I view it differently. I think the US pullout from Iraq is a master stroke if a bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities goes ahead. If the US troops were still in Iraq it would provide the perfect excuse to engage them overland in Iraq and possibly even make an overland push to Israel.

As it is relations are warming between the newly sovereign Iraq, and Iran. For an example see Christopher Booker's article on the sinister collaboration between Baghdad and Tehran to liquidate 3,400 Iranian rebels in Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

It is unlikely that Iran would mount any sort of campaign against Israel, the US and its allies by going overland through Iraq now that Iraq is sovereign and on its own. There would, however, be the excuse to make advances overland in the other, westward direction toward Afghanistan where the US is still active.

How convenient then that some of the US forces leaving Iraq are not going home but are actually being redeployed (according to this dude) to bolster forces in Afghanistan, perhaps in preparation for possible retaliation from Iran for the planned bombings or even a land incursion into Iran.

Although the military objectives were largely achieved well by the US-led coalition, with notable exceptions like failing to quell the insurgency and a learning curve for dealing with IEDs that eventually resulted in the use of MRAPs, the stated political ambitions before the war to rebuild Iraq were not achieved.

MRAPs coming over the border from Iraq into Kuwait. I just learned about these as I viewed the final withdrawal from Iraq on CNN. The two metal rails fixed over the vehicles are power line diverters. The vehicles were taking down power lines everywhere so they put these rails on them to divert the lines over the top.

George Bush, Dick Cheney and other neo-cons have a lot of pain, blood and misery on their hands to answer for. Bush didn't even get an authorisation from Congress for the war.

About 4,500 US soldiers were killed, mostly through the use of the infamous Improvised Explosive Devices. The mainstream media says that about 100,000 Iraqis died during the war. Other estimates have it at 1,000,000 Iraqis dead. Millions more were displaced or otherwise deeply affected.

Iraq is littered with depleted uranium from US munitions that are causing cancers and birth defects.

All a needless waste including 1 trillion US dollars wasted. What a bill!

War should only be waged if you absolutely have to and there are genuine defensive needs. Iraq is too distant from the US to ever be a threat that warrants an invasion.

If America had a president like Ron Paul this wouldn't have happened. Let's hope he becomes president and the US can start to heal its relationship with the rest of the world.

Response to An open letter to Donna Laframboise

2011-12-05T16:58:00.004+10:00

This is a rebuttal to:

An open letter to Donna Laframboise (or, You have got to be F*!$*%@&! kidding me)

by Brooke LaFlamme,

November 3, 2011,

posted on the Molecular Love blog.

I couldn't post on that page because the comments are now closed. It regards Donna Laframboise's book on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert.

I must apologise for the value of this exercise in advance, as the poster admits she hasn't even read the book which made it rather an easy target to rebut. But here goes anyway.

I have read the book and it's a good read and quite an expose of the IPCC. If you want to read it on PC I recommend the Kindle version on which it is easy to resize the font on the Kindle-for-PC.

Highlight's of the book include the ties chapter reviewers have to environmental activist groups. And a survey of references which reveal that almost a third of the IPCC references are actually grey, environmental activist literature, not peer-reviewed.

The post from Molecular Love is in red. My response is in black:

Yesterday, I read a lovely article on Foxnews.com with the headline “U.N. Hires Grad Students to Author Key Climate Report.” The article was about a new ‘book’ by ‘journalist’ Donna Laframboise, or as Fox put it “A scathing expose”. Scathing. The book is called “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.”

Not sure why "journalist" is put in quotes here. Whatever you may think of what she writes Ms Laframboise has been publishing writing in one form or other for over two decades. (Donna Laframboise profile here.) I'd say this makes her a journalist. So this seems to be a slight ad hominem attack.

After I calmed down, I decided that the best way to cope with the idiocy in this article with my strong feelings about the article was to write this little letter to her. I will have to say two things up front. First, I didn’t read the book because, honestly, I could barely make it through the terribly written Fox News piece. I don’t think I would have survived the book (nor do I have the time to read it).

The book is actually quite a pleasant, easy read and could be read in a day or two. (Of course it could be an excruciating read if you like to believe in the IPCC without question.)

Second, I am not a climate change expert (or even an expert at all, according to Ms. Laframboise), but she isn’t really qualified to comment on climate change, either. Ms. Laframboise has a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s studies. Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for people who study gender issues. It just doesn’t make them climate scientists.

The book is an investigation of the procedures and systems of the organisation of the IPCC. It does not directly address any of the science. The science does come up, many times actually, but only to add context to the story.

I do believe I am qualified to write about the scientific process, and what it means to be a graduate student in the sciences, and that’s what I’m going to focus on here.

An earth sciences graduate student perhaps? Anyhow, as said above the book is primarily journalistic, not scientific. You can garner that from the reviews on Amazon of the book.

So, with that, a calmly written letter…

Dear Ms. Laframboise,

I read with interest an article about your new book about the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.” Because I know, from reading your Google profile, that you are a constantly evolving person, I thought I might help to speed up the process a little in one important aspect.

You write that the people performing much of the research relating to climate science are graduate students, people in their twenties. In fact, it is much worse than that: much of the research in all of science is performed by these people whose “experience of the world,” you write, “is neither broad nor deep.” You seem upset by the fact that these young scientists are called upon as experts to aid in the writing of the IPCC’s reports.

It's a shame Ms LaFlamme didn't read the book as she would have learned that the IPCC does not do any research of its own. It's job is to collate and summarize the works of others. So, the next three paragraphs are a complete waste of effort on her part.

The problem appears to arise from your complete lack of knowledge of how the academic system works. I can’t blame you, since you never experienced it yourself, having stopped after your undergraduate degree to pursue a higher calling. A calling that includes labelling people who DO pursue a higher degree as incompetent and unqualified.

For example, the article on foxnews.com states, “Grad students often co-author scientific papers to help with the laborious task of writing. Such papers are rarely the cornerstone for trillions of dollars worth of government climate funding, however — nor do they win Nobel Peace prizes.” I will assume that the bit about “Nobel Peace prizes” was a mistake made by the Fox News writer, since as I’m sure you’re aware, scientific achievements do not lead to Peace prizes. Further, most science of any kind doesn’t lead to a Nobel Prize. They really don’t hand out that many of them.

The author isn't aware at this point that the IPCC shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore (seems crazy all these years later, doesn't it?) This fact is pointed out to her in the comments section of her posting, which she does acknowledge.

But let’s de-construct this one a little more. Grad students often are the lead author on scientific publications, because they carried out the work. I know you feel that this shouldn’t be the case. How can they do science without a Ph.D?! Well, it turns out that’s how you get a Ph.D. By doing research that leads to publications. I can’t comment on the “cornerstone” comment because I genuinely have no idea what the point even was.

Again, there is no original research done by the IPCC itself. Therefore, they need high level experts deciding which works are in and which are not. For this you need top professors and experts with PhD's and years of experience, not early 20's graduate students (many with ties to activist groups like Greenpeace and WWF). That is Laframboise's book in a nutshell.

I was astounded, and personally very offended by this little gem, though I’m sure you had the very best of intentions:

“We’ve been told for the past two decades that ‘the Climate Bible’ was written by the world’s foremost experts,” Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise told FoxNews.com. “But the fact is, you are just not qualified without a doctorate. In academia you aren’t even on the radar at that point.”

First of all, what is a Climate Bible? The Bible is a collection of books that the faithful believe is the word of God and cannot be refuted. The IPCC recommendations, on the other hand, are based on evidence, research, and the scientific method, all of which can be refuted if research is performed that comes to a different conclusion. It’s not a bible, but rather the conclusions drawn from an enormous base of scientific results.

In fact, we find that the lead authors are dominated by scientists who believe in "the cause", exclude others who don't believe in the theory of AGW and often have longstanding involvements with activist groups like Greenpeace and WWF. There is evidence of bias from these authors in choosing which point of view the IPCC takes.

The Delinquent Teenager also contains the results of a survey of the references used for Assessment Report 4 (AR4) and found that one third of the them were "grey literature" from hiking magazines, and various articles from activist organisations such as Greenpeace and the WWF.

At the end of Brooke's post is the call to trust the experts. This is where the term Bible comes in. Because, it is blind faith not to question or to attempt to confirm scientific claims from such experts especially when the stakes are so high.

Secondly, I’m not even “on the radar”? Come on, that’s just hurtful. The fact is, if you are working toward your Ph.D. under the supervision of an established researcher, you *are* qualified to write scientific articles, including reviews, and to be on advisory panels...

Yeah, but to lead the advisory panel? No, grad students should not be on the radar for that.

...Getting your Ph.D. is not a magical transition from being a useless grunt to having all the tools necessary to do science. It’s a long road...

We want to get to the end of the road, to a fully fledged climate expert, because that is what the "world's future" deserves. We're not supervising a thesis here. We are supposed to be creating the most Grand Coalition of climate science, or any science, ever seen.

Laframboise's book shows what a failure this has been. So tainted by politics it was always going to fail the scientific standard.

When the dices have to be so loaded, the lead authors hand-picked to be complicit with the global warming script; when you have to bully and exclude papers or opinions that do not conform to the consensus, you have nothing more than a faith.

... You have to perform world-class science, be published in peer-reviewed journals, and present your work at national and international meetings, among other things. By the time a grad student receives their Ph.D. he or she should most certainly be “on the radar”. Their names should be known to top scientists in the field. They should be an expert in that field long before they get a magic piece of paper that gives them the right to say “Doctor” before their name. The expertise doesn’t come after.

But while grad students do author many papers, and are often the corresponding authors on those papers, they are always co-authored by their mentor, an established researcher in the field, one who goes by Doctor. This author is often called the “senior author,” not “lead author.” I think that’s where you got confused. Those “top experts” in a larger field are the senior authors. The lead authors, often graduate students, are in training to be top experts in a large scientific field, as well.

No, Brooke is confusing the term "lead author" here. The lead author of a paper is the one which does the most work or writing. A grad student would be fine in many such circumstances.

At the IPCC, on the other hand, "lead author" means the person who selects which papers are included and which aren't in a particular chapter of the report. In that case you need the top expert -- the finished product. Surely no-one less would do for the world's foremost climate body?

However, they are the top experts in their own narrower research field, which is why they are called upon as experts by the IPCC.

Again, no expert testimony or evidence is provided by anyone other than contributing authors, and they are not necessarily involved in the construction of the various chapters of the report. Some like Environmental Defense Fund's (a vested interest group) Michael Oppenheimer are exceptions -- mentioned in the book.

Many contributors disagreed with the lead author's chapter conclusions. It is mentioned in Laframboise's book that many were forbidden to express dissent toward the chapter conclusions as decided by the lead author.

In reading the article on foxnews.com, I found myself confused about some of the sensational information from the book that I thought you might be able to clarify. Specifically, I was confused about why the information was sensational.

The article states:

One lead author of the 2001 edition was a trainee at the Munich Reinsurance Company in 2000 and lacked a master’s degree while on the panel. He did not earn a Ph.D. until ten years later.

Is the issue that he didn’t have a Master’s or that he didn’t earn his Ph.D. for so long? Granted, 10 years or more is a long Ph.D., but it seems he was working at a company at the same time, so it doesn’t surprise me. Further, most graduate students in science working toward their Ph.D. don’t have a Master’s degree. It’s not necessary in many countries, including the U.S.

Or this one:

Another lead author in 1994 earned his master’s only two years earlier and had his first academic paper published in 1995.

First academic paper only three years after starting his Ph.D. program? I also think it’s pretty impressive. I assume that’s what you were getting at.

Dutch geography professor Richard Klein has been a lead author for six IPCC reports and in 1997 became a coordinating lead author. He was promoted to the panel’s most senior role while he was 28 years old — six years prior to completing his PhD.

Wow, he had a lot going on during his Ph.D. Was probably difficult to work with the IPCC and complete all his research. I guess you were also impressed by this?...

No. This is awful; that they would have these two academics who had both other jobs and/or degrees to work on. I would expect the lavishly funded IPCC to be able to employ the top experts full-time to address humanity's supposed greatest threat ever.

... And the fact that his research was so recognized by the scientific community, even before publication (which always takes forever, let me tell you), that they promoted him to this senior role.

I read that you said, “neither [Klein's] youth nor his thin academic credentials prevented the IPCC from regarding him as one of the world’s top experts,” so I guess you were simply impressed. That’s right, in science, you can be good at your job even if you’re young and have yet to publish numerous papers.

Of course you can be good. But we want the best. Every academic looks forward to a life where one's expertise gets greater with age, not the same or less. So we go for the "ripest", most qualified academic product. This is generally increased with age.

Finally, I’d like to comment on the closing quote you gave for the Fox article:

“We’ve been told that [the IPCC] is a responsible business man in a three-piece suit, but it turns out it’s a sloppily dressed teenager — a spoiled brat that can’t be trusted,” she said.

Yes, we scientists may be sloppily dressed, having no reason to wear a three-piece suit to do our jobs, but judging the validity of the IPCC based on the fact that it recognizes the contributions and expertise of young scientists is irresponsible, offensive, and uninformed.

The teenager is a metaphor for the delinquency of the IPCC. Hence, the sloppy dressing is also a metaphor. It's not meant to be taken literally as a stab at professors dressed like a 1960's golfer with the comb-over that never works.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I know you hate “intellectual laziness” and “hysteria”, and greatly value “independent analysis” and “fair play”, according to your own profile, I might think that you wrote this book simply to push an agenda of climate-change denial. I hope that my letter has helped you realize that one of your points, the youth of some scientists, is not a valid one to use to bash the work of a respected community of scientists within the IPCC....

Well, all of the evidence in the book -- if Ms LaFlamme had read it -- is that the IPCC is a politically and ideologically driven organisation that stamps out any dissenting views that man is dangerously warming the planet.

And through things like climategate we have ample evidence from the inside at the sort of group think and circle-the-wagon mentality of the world's top climate scientists.

.... Unfortunately, though, I can’t help you see the flaws in your logic on climate change. I’ll leave that up to the experts.

Sincerely,

Brooke LaFlamme (a graduate student).

Well, unfortunately for Brooke, some of us choose to question the methods, practices and opinions of these experts to see if they add up.

It's all too easy to just sit back and believe other people. Brooke concludes here letter with: "I’ll leave that up to the experts." Now that's the very kind of intellectual laziness Brooke tangentially accuses Laframboise of in her last paragraph!

After Brooke's lecture on what science is and isn't I thought there should something about the endeavour to verify work from her but there isn't.

Researchers like Michael Mann and Phil Jones seek to deny Freedom Of Information requests for their raw data and methods. They still refuse to give it to this day.

Why wouldn't they just have it all out in the open in the first place so we can all verify it? Can we verify the exact correlation between human CO2 and temperatures? Here is the correlation, or lack of it:

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". -- Wendell Phillips

I imagine Ms LaFlamme means well; that she cares about the environment, and sincerely believes in this consensus of climate scientists. But I urge her to consider that consensus is not how science is done. It involves evidence and transparency.

In fact the history of science is littered with consensuses that were wrong. One example is the former consensus that stomach ulcers were not caused by bacteria.

Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were ridiculed by mainstream science until one of them proved it by giving himself an ulcer with the bacteria they discovered, then curing himself.

Sometimes scientific bodies and organisations can be more of a hindrance than a help to advancing science, due to dogma.

The key is to look for the signs. Do the researchers show their data and methods, or do they hide them? Do they consider two sides to an argument or only one? Do they seek to have papers not published just because they don't like the conclusions? Do they seek to have some person's thesis revoked because they don't toe the line? (Such as here.)

If so it suggests that the climate scare is made not for pure or scientific purposes, but because of a loose grouping of vested interests who stand to benefit from it at our expense.

___________________________________________

In that Fox News article there is a claim by Aaron Huertas from left-wing environmental activist group Union of Concerned Scientists:

"Attacking scientists based on their age instead of their work is misleading and more than a little offensive to younger researchers," Huertas said....

It's not about age, and that's clear in the book. So this is a "straw-man" argument -- changing the original intent of Laframboise's criticism to make it seem ludicrous.

No, it's not ageism. It's respect for qualifications that are accumulated through the passage of time -- and that time is namely years. That's why most professors are old and most grad students are young. There's no secret there.

The IPCC should be going for the scientists with the best and highest qualifications they can get. Not people who happened to do a bit of field research in flowers a few years back and will write what they want.

There is evidence in Laframboise's book of non-climate scientists being the chapter reviewers. Oh the horror. It's OK, the grad student turned out to be from WWF and Greenpeace, so they don't need PhDs.

"The IPCC’s materials are thoroughly vetted by many scientists and are open to public comment, too."

Except, in Laframboise's book we find instances where contributing author's who did not toe the line were silenced or dismissed.

The fallacy of the greenhouse effect 2

2011-04-01T18:48:00.033+10:00

Part 1 Part 2

In part 2 I rebut some of the claims to an atmospheric greenhouse effect using the concepts introduced in the first part.

Given the Earth's distance from the Sun and the Sun's electromagnetic radiation (EMR) Earth should by conventional calculations be about -18C temperature on average. However Earth's surface temperature is 15C on average -- a difference of 33C. Many have resorted to the notion of a greenhouse effect to explain this difference.

To the various greenhouse claims I have heard:

1. It is a one way valve for EMR.

2. Back radiation will add energy.

3. It reflects energy like a mirror.

4. It reduces the emissivity of Earth.

5. It slows the EMR flux.

6. It is a greenhouse blanket.

7. CO₂ is an absorber of infrared energy therefore it must add energy.

8. The air above is cooler therefore capable of absorbing energy from the ground and this adds heat.

9. It shallows the environmental lapse rate (vertical temperature gradient) and therefore slows convection.

I now address each of these points in turn:

1. It is a one way valve for EMR.

Rebuttal:

A one way valve for heat requires work. A passive blanket such as the atmosphere does not have its own work.

It depends on the relative temperature and the atmosphere happens to be colder than the ground. Heat only flows from hot to cold despite the presence of back radiation.

The greenhouse theory is that light from the Sun falls to the ground warming it up. The Earth then emits at a lower temperature than the Sun at lower frequencies that are absorbed by greenhouse gases. You then get more warmth than you otherwise would because this adds to the heat content of the Earth.

figure 1

Contrary to the above depiction Earth's atmosphere is a "passive blanket". A passive blanket can only slow fluctuations of temperature such as how the Earth stays warmer at night and cooler during the day than the Moon with its lack of atmosphere.

Earth has better surface temperature regulation than the Moon due to the heat capacity of its atmosphere; the ability to reflect more sunlight back into space; and how the fluids of the air and oceans redistribute heat. For the greenhouse effect to work it would require Earth's atmosphere to be an active blanket; that is, a powered one.

If the air were to get warmer than the ground, heat could flow from the air to the ground. Yet the air can't get warmer than the ground because the energy to warm the air came from the ground in the first place.

The heat lost from any object can't warm something else up more than itself. And heat can't turn around back on itself and heat itself up again. Work would have to be performed for such a thing to happen and greenhouse gases have no energy source of their own.

That the air is colder than the ground is shown in the vertical temperature gradient or environmental lapse. Moving up in altitude the air temperature cools by an average of 6.5 degrees celsius per kilometre¹.

It's an Achilles heel for greenhouse theorists. The air can only be gaining heat from the ground if it is colder than it. Meanwhile the air can only heat the ground below if it gets warmer than it. The air can't be both hotter and colder at the same time. Hence: no heat pump or one way valve effect.

This convention of heat flow is represented in the following diagram:

Figure 2

Object A has the highest temperature. B has the second highest. C has the third highest. D is the coolest -- an infinite heat sink maintained at absolute zero. Despite A and C receiving the same amount of EMR from B only C is heated by B. A is not heated by B.

For the greenhouse effect to be real C could heat B and B could heat A. Contrary to this contention heat only flows in the direction of the black arrows².

In figure 2 above, B is not heated by C despite its back radiation. And A is not heated by B despite its back radiation.

EMR may convey heat or not depending on the relative temperatures of the objects involved. It is better to view EMR as an information signal to the Universe which may or may not convey heat depending on the situation in which it is received as well as sent.

Mutual EMR is really about equalising temperature differences throughout the Universe. It is not about raising the overall temperature from nothing.

In radiative transfer the range of EMR frequencies emitted from a colder object will not be able to on the whole stimulate a warmer object to become warmer still.

And so in the case of the Earth the air won't heat the ground because the atmosphere is colder than it.

2. Back radiation will add energy.

Rebuttal:

All objects emit and receive mutual EMR. These mutually exchanged vectors cancel. They do not add.

Every object emits and absorbs EMR at all frequencies to some extent and the amount mutually exchanged cancels. Everything is bathed in a sea of EMR even on the inside of objects. Yet this mutual exchange neither adds to nor subtracts from the total energy.

There's a popular post on Dr Roy Spencer's website from 6 August 2010 called help back radiation has invaded my backyard.

Figure 3
Does back radiation warm you up like a ray gun? It depends on the relative temperature.

The fact of the matter is back-EMR is not indicative of any greenhouse effect nor of heat trapping of EMR. It's better to view the back radiation from the sky as merely a measure of its temperature.

The infrared that's emitted by the night sky back to the ground says nothing of how the energy arrived there whether as a result of convection; evaporation and re-condensation of water; or by EMR absorption.

3. It reflects energy like a mirror.

Rebuttal:

At equilibrium the internal reflection or emission of EMR makes no difference to the temperature of an object.

Imagine a hollow sphere that has EMR emitting on the inside and out (figure 4a).

Figure 4a

Cross section through hollow sphere emitting EMR.

Let us split this sphere in half to consider the effect of one side upon the other (figure 4b).

Figure 4b

Let the left hemisphere emit to the right hemisphere 50% of its EMR -- 25% of the whole. Now the right side absorbs this and re-emits 12.5% of the whole back to the left hemisphere as per greenhouse theory. In such a way energy is added to itself and counted again.

This impossibility is resolved by assuming that the internal flux of EMR in an object is cancelling. The same is true for the upper layers of atmosphere radiating on to the lower levels and the surface of the Earth.

Were this argument not to be true the law of conservation of energy³ would be wrong and you could get energy for free from nothing from such things as mutual radiation.

The only thing that can make a difference to the temperature of an object involving the exchange of EMR is to change the emissivity.

An example of this is an emergency silver foil blanket where it's low emissivity warms up the inside. CO₂ has a high emissivity. So it's not like a foil emergency blanket. CO₂ will help the heat loss of the Earth through its high emissivity.

In a Princeton University atmosphere lecture note (page 8/12 here) it says that at some frequencies of infrared clouds and the atmosphere act like a mirror.

If it's reflecting, rather than absorbing and re-emitting EMR, this reflection is an elastic collision and no energy is absorbed by the "mirrors", which in this case are the clouds and the air.

If this form of back radiation could add to the overall temperature the following impossible energy multiplication could occur:

Figure 5

(via Hockey Schtick)

4. It reduces the emissivity of Earth.

Rebuttal:

Just as CO₂ is a good absorber it is also a good emitter. CO₂ increases Earth's emissivity.

The process of absorption and emission merely moves the emission point from the warmer surface to the cooler upper atmosphere.

The only way to get increased temperature without the application of work is to have a lowered emissivity. Being a good absorber of EMR CO₂is equally good an emitter as per Kirchhoff's law⁴. This increases Earth's emissivity.

Over 99% of the CO₂ absorption of infrared light occurs within about 10 metres of the ground. For example infrared absorption by CO₂ at wavenumber 2349 is 99% at 70 centimetres above the surface⁵. This will heat the air a little bit if it's cooler (like depicted in figure 15a below) or not at all if the air is at the same temperature.

Then there is the phenomenon of line broadening of the CO₂ absorption -- the so-called wings on the initial absorption line. It's a widening into a trough or valley in the red graphs of figure 6 from what's usually a thinner line (like this) for CO₂absorption.

The broadening occurs through such things as Doppler broadening and it seems to reduce the emissivity of Earth (figure 6).

Figure 6

Four modtran emission temperatures looking down from heights 1, 8, 18 and 80km including absorption of CO₂ and other gases. Red graph is the apparent atmospheric emission temperature at differing wavelengths.

Humidity = 0. CO₂ = 375ppm.

It's better to view this line broadening as just an expansion of the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in moving the emission point from the warmer surface to the cooler upper atmosphere. The bottom of the prominent trough of CO₂ absorption in 6b 6c and 6d above centred on wave number 680 is tied to the temperature of the air at that point.

You can compare the emission temperature to the air temperature in this green graph generated at the same modtran simulator:

Figure 7

Temperature graph in green.

The reader may question: if EMR is the only way for Earth to lose heat the fact that Earth emits less must mean that it warms up. I intend to address this controversy in a follow-up post. Suffice it to say that there's more to the question of what the Earth's average temperature really is. Plus there could be other ways energy can be lost or gained in the atmosphere not involving a greenhouse effect.

If adding a high emissivity agent such as CO₂ could block the transmission of heat-energy in the form of EMR then the application of a high emissivity coating to an object would be a useless way to enhance an object's energy dissipation because it would block energy from getting to the surface due to the high absorptivity that comes with high emissivity thus cancelling itself out.

High emissivity coatings are used in rockets. It lowers the temperature of the combustion chamber because, while the high emissivity coating does not significantly stop heat conduction within the rocket liner wall where physical heat conduction dominates, it does assist EMR to leave the object.

So too it is for the atmosphere. CO₂ assists the emission of EMR into space. If there was any credibility for an atmospheric greenhouse effect at all there would be a hot spot in the air that's just not there (as publicised by Jo Nova).

5. It slows the EMR flux.

Rebuttal:

Yes but irrelevant in light of the huge amount of heat conveyed by evaporation and convection.

As long as the up going EMR is lower than the down going there is no addition of heat to the ground.

The Earth emits as much EMR as it receives from the Sun so there is no imbalance.

"Slows the EMR flux" means that the difference between the up going and the down going EMR is lessened. When you sum the up going and the down going the total EMR emitted through the troposphere is lower so the Earth gets warmer. That's the idea at least.

However, even though through the process of absorption and re-emission EMR does bend around corners and goes back down to Earth the energy isn't being multiplied. It can't be counted again.

All molecules of the atmosphere absorb and emit EMR at every wavelength to a certain extent. There is only a slight difference between the magnitude of EMR in the vertical direction -- the downward being slightly less than the upward.

The heat budget diagrams of Prof Kevin Trenberth of the IPCC and Gavin Schmidt of NASA multiply the upward radiation after it is absorbed and re-emitted by the atmosphere by a factor of two (based on this diagram from here).

figure 8

Kiehl and Trenberth heat budget 1997⁶.

There is something very wrong with the above diagram (many things actually). Shouldn't there be an equal amount of EMR radiated up and down from the sky layer?

In figure 9 the EMR down is 324 W/m²while the EMR up is 165 + 30 = 195. How can there be such a discrepancy? Is this IPCC voodoo magic?

figure 9

My adjusted version with opposing vectors of EMR cancelled. (NASA has a similar version here.)

With the upward and downward EMR vectors cancelled (figure 9) the upward net EMR is 66 W/m².

And once that infrared EMR is absorbed in the first few metres above the ground it's done all the heating it will do and it creates barely a blip on the vertical temperature gradient (see figure 15a below).

The greenhouse effect says that EMR energy is trapped (figure 10a).

Figure 10a

This is incorrect. The Earth actually emits as much EMR as it receives from the Sun⁷.

Figure 10b

Earth emits EMR at an apparent temperature of -18C mostly from the top of the atmosphere⁸. The EMR projected upward dissipates heat from the Earth because it goes to a cold heat sink: the Universe. The EMR projected downward toward Earth neither adds to nor subtracts from the temperature.

6. It is a greenhouse blanket.

Rebuttal:

Blankets and greenhouse roofs work by blocking convection. This does not exist in an unrestrained gaseous atmosphere.

The gas of the atmosphere acts nothing like a human blanket nor the glass roof of a greenhouse. In both the latter cases the mechanism of warming is reduced heat loss due to the blocking of convection.

Figure 11

The fibres of a blanket blocking convection of air particles.

If you put on too many winter clothes you will experience overheating due to lack of convection. The human body feels comfortable at air temperatures a few degrees lower than body temperature.

The body prefers to lose a certain amount of the heat generated internally. If the air temperature goes above this comfort zone the body will sweat to utilise that powerful mover of energy the latent heat of evaporation of water.

The human experience of a blanket is projected onto the atmosphere to visualise a greenhouse effect. But absorption and re-emission of EMR is not a slower nor a blocker of heat energy.

There's so much heat conduction from convection in the atmosphere that if you get rid of the air immediately above the ground (say 10 metres) the temp will go up to about 70C (based on beer bottle experiment of first part). If you get rid of the atmosphere altogether, with its reflective power, it will become about 107C like the Moon.

Let us consider three main modes of heat transport from the surface to the upper troposphere:

figure 12

Object A represents the Earth. Let there be three main modes of heat loss from the surface: convection, water evaporation and EMR.

The idea of the greenhouse effect is that one of the three main modes -- EMR -- is "blocked" or slowed down like a tap that you can turn down. In solids and fluids at Earth temperature EMR is not that significant a conveyor of heat.

Considering the power of water evaporation and convection to pick up the slack, a few degrees C is not going to make much difference in the scheme things such as the vertical temperature gradient. EMR is not the independent factor greenhouse theorists consider it to be.

Absorption of infrared by CO₂ can delay or slow the outgoing heat for a time by converting the faster escaping infrared light into slower moving convection. But it can't create extra warmth. It cannot displace the ground temperature to a hotter point as depicted in diagram 15b below.

7. CO₂ is a good absorber of infrared energy therefore it must add energy.

Rebuttal:

Yes absorption can make an object warmer. But it doesn't then turn the energy around and make the warming object (in this case the surface) warmer than it originally was.

Yes, an object absorbing EMR will warm if the radiating object is warmer than it. The temperature in the sky will be changed. But that doesn't mean that it heats us more than we originally were down here on the surface of the Earth. That's not if you wish to believe in the laws of thermodynamics anyway.

Once EMR leaves the ground and moves upward it is immaterial to the ground temperature whether it is subsequently absorbed on the way out or not. The magnitude of the heat flow in EMR is irrelevant to the question of the emanating object's starting temperature as long as the direction of heat points away.

Once it warms the air to the higher temperature (close to the ground) its work is done. You don't keep counting every emission and re-absorption from a greenhouse gas molecule.

8. The air above is cooler, therefore capable of absorbing energy from the ground and this adds heat.

Rebuttal:

This version comes from climate sceptic Lubos Motl. I base this contention on a comment he made -- I think it was on comment is free (The Guardian) -- where he said the greenhouse effect exists because the air is cooler than the ground. I think the reasoning is along the lines of the following sort of observation (figure 13).

Figure 13

It's basically a variation on point 7. The idea is that the atmosphere is a cooler than the ground just like that gas cloud is and therefore absorbs some heat. This is true.

But in the above diagram putting the cloud there doesn't make the emanating object warmer than it was.

9. It shallows the environmental lapse rate and therefore slows convection.

Rebuttal:

Gradients are a result of temperature difference not a cause.

The flow of heat is the result of the difference in temperature from one place to another. It's an effect not a cause. Heat doesn't back up like cars on a freeway going slower with the cars in front effectively slowing the cars behind.

Heat flows as fast or as slow as the temperature difference requires regardless of any so-called EMR blocking.

If anything CO₂ will deepen the vertical temperature gradient due to it displacing a lot more weight in the vertical direction when it rises and hence loses more temperature than main constituents O₂ and N₂.

In the warmth of the day the vertical mixing of the air just goes higher or increases the gradient (figure 14). The diurnal variations in convection have gradients that tend to meet at a point about 2 km off the ground to where the vertical temperature gradient resumes at a constant gradient and magnitude around the clock.

Figure 14

It is this vertical temperature gradient which dominates over the flow of EMR and which therefore renders any greenhouse effect by absorption meaningless.

Figure 15

Horizontal axis is temperature in kelvin. Vertical axis is altitude. Blue line represents air temperature without greenhouse effect. Red line is with greenhouse effect.

The above figure 15a depicts the greenhouse warming I would expect. Note that in my graph 15a the temperatures meet at the ground. In greenhouse theory the air temperature moves the ground temperature to the right.

Since the ground is the source of the heat diagram 15b is against the laws of physics. Even the deviation in my depiction in figure 15a above is an exaggeration to the true effect that the greenhouse absorption has. Being only 390ppm CO₂'s heating effect is negligible.

At the end of the day any human-made heating whether it be CO₂ absorption; or a building; or an asphalt car park even if it's like 2 - 3 C will be nothing in the scheme of things such as the vertical temperature gradient; the dissipation of heat at night; convection; and so on.

References:

1. Environmental lapse rate.
2. The second law of thermodynamics.
3. Conservation of energy.
4. Kirchhoff's Law.
5. Calculation at 2349 wave number per centimetre using an absorbance calculator. Assumes no scattering. Absorption coefficient is 1214. Atmospheric molarity 0.000023 mol per litre.
6. Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997: Earth's Annual Global Mean Energy Budget, Bull. Am. Met. Soc. 78, 197-208. Here and here. Pic only here. (Updated 2008 diagram here.)
7. NASA measurements of EMR flux.
8. Encyclopedia of the Solar System, Second Edition (McFadden, Weissman, Johnson, 2006).

Further Reading:

WattsUpWithThat guest posts by Tom Vonk 1,2.

Refreshing A Current Affair stories

2010-11-12T19:10:00.004+10:00

Tonight I was watching A Current Affair Queensland edition and there were two environment-related stories. The first was on the fad of banning plastic bags sweeping Australia.

Tasmania has now joined three other states in banning them. But, refreshingly and unexpectedly, the article sensibly argued that the so-called green polypropylene bags that replace the usual polyethylene ones take a lot longer to biodegrade. Plus, they are prone to getting bacteria with multiple use, which the article didn't mention.

"Green" shopping bags: they're more about feeling good than actually helping the environment.

Then there was a story about the changing climate in Queensland. I've noticed it for about three years now -- the climate is getting cooler, cloudier and rainier. It's actually quite pleasant for me but it is creating a lot of storms, floods and cyclone activity.

1974 Brisbane flood

For every second of that story I was waiting for them mention "climate change" or "carbon emissions". But to their credit there was no mention of it at all and instead there was a sensible explanation of it being due to the la Nina in the Pacific.

Furthermore, they honestly reported that this is nothing new for Queensland but a return to the way it was in the 1970's -- floods and rain. I hope this is a sign the the climate change madness is coming to an end. Well done ACA.

The real reason for NBN: censorship

2010-10-25T10:22:00.004+10:00

Stephen Conroy: clubbing democracy and freedom to death

Senator Stephen Conroy loves his Chinese-style Internet filter for Australia. It's also the real reason he supports the government's uneconomical National Broadband Network: to hardwire in the censorship.

From The Australian 25 October 2010:

Censorship the real sleeper in the government's $43bn NBN chaos

..if things go according to plan, NBN Co will be Australia's communications gatekeeper, owned and driven by a government that favours internet censorship.

The consequences of this in a democracy raise potentially disturbing issues affecting the free flow of information that go well beyond dollars and cents. In effect, the NBN rollout gives the government the ability to determine what content is suitable for delivery into the home -- a situation not dissimilar from that which operates in China.

Websites like Planetary Vision would be prime targets for Conroy's Internet filter. Australia already has one of the most controlled, monopolistic media in the world. Getting a handle on the Internet would starve one of the few routes for unfiltered information to reach the Australian people. Total information control. He who controls the information controls the people.

Let's review what's in store for the Australian people:

Smart electricity meters on every house allowing unlimited warrant-less monitoring of people's sleeping hours and usages of electrical devices. A tracker in every automobile to track your travel under the guise of stopping level-rail crossing accidents. And a NBN with China-style censorship hardwired in.

What happened to the Australia I knew? We are in the grip of the New World Order. Fascist scum like Stephen Conroy need to be removed from office. They are un-Australian.

The fallacy of the greenhouse effect

2010-10-18T21:04:00.052+10:00

Part 1 Part 2

An object can warm through the absorption of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). However, an object passively warmed can't warm the object providing the warmth. Were this to be so energy could be multiplied for no extra input merely by having objects mutually radiate EMR. But there is no such temperature multiplication because the amount mutually exchanged cancels. It does not add as is required by greenhouse theory.

The reason that an object can be heated by EMR on earth by the sun is because the sun is warmer than the earth. The idea of the greenhouse effect is that the cooler, upper layers of air are able to warm a warmer ground by backradiation. But this can not happen.

Greenhouse theory would even require that the backradiation from the earth to the sun warms the sun by a small (if practically imperceptible) amount. This is impossible too because a cooler object can not warm a warmer one unless work is done. But greenhouse gas, not having an energy source, can not provide this work nor can the earth provide work to the sun.

200-plus years of thermal study must be thrown out the window if we are to believe that EMR from a colder object can warm a warmer one. If that were the case energy could be made from nothing merely by bringing two objects together mutually radiating EMR (such as the air and ground) such as the following examples show.

Let object A represent a warmer object radiating to an infinite heat sink C maintained at absolute zero. Object B is introduced into its field of radiation and so is warmed:

Object B comes up to equilibrium temperature. Now it has its own radiation and object A is subject to more radiation than it was before (which was zero). If the cooler object B can warm the warmer object A through backradiation then object A will heat to a higher temperature than before for free merely because object B is passively warmed.

Object A and B now radiate more energy to the universe than when A was by itself merely by B's presence. This is clearly not possible.

Now to carry it further let the sphere B be replaced by many such spheres B on one side of A. They all radiate as much EMR as the original object B. With eight spheres the energy is multiplied eightfold according to greenhouse theory:

Object A is eight times as warmed by backradiation as it was when there was only one sphere B. In the case of the atmosphere this is the equivalent of putting more greenhouse gas "energy absorbers" in the atmosphere.

Now let the EMR blocking coverage continue from eight spheres B to a hemispherical shell B. This is a cross-section through B:

Now half the radiation of A is blocked by B. According to greenhouse theory half of this half will be radiated back to object A thus warming it. Object A now emits 100% + 25% now re-radiated back by the hemisphere B. An extra 25% energy gain for free!

Let the hemispherical shell B become a fully enclosing spherical shell B:

According to greenhouse theory as much of the amount emitted outside of shell B will be emitted inside. But what happens to the amount emitted inside? Does it add to the energy? According to greenhouse theory yes, but how can it? Only the amount emitted to the outside of the system is relevant.

(The outside shell B must radiate a total amount which was equal to A's original output. Being at a larger radius it will have a lower emission temperature. Effectively the shell B is a red shifter of the EMR spectrum. Yet the amount of energy emitted in total will be the same.)

If adding shells as greenhouse blockers could work as an energy multiplier then Willis Eschenbach's steel greenhouse model would work. Many commenters on that thread in defence of the greenhouse effect objected to its preposterousness but it is not warranted because the model is an accurate representation of the greenhouse effect; it's just that the greenhouse effect is preposterous.

For me the resolution to the paradox is to view heat energy like a stream that only flows downhill, from warmer to cooler, despite the presence of backradiation.

An ordinary, human blanket creates warming by blocking convection not by "backradiation". An emergency aluminium foil blanket warms by a high reflectivity/low emissivity, not by absorption and re-emission.

In the case of the earth the only way that a chemical can alter temperature is by a lowered emissivity. But greenhouse gases being good absorbers are also good emitters as per Kirchhoff's law.

An empirical example of how a cooler object can not warm a warmer object can be seen in the operation of a vacuum furnace.

Representative vacuum furnace production run: (a) furnace and workload temperatures versus time; (b) power requirement to achieve the temperature profile.

My note: (The lower black line is a more efficient power supply than the upper red dotted line).

In a vacuum furnace the air is removed, so the only way to convey heat is via EMR. For the first 2 hours the power input (black line) is made higher at 40% of max power to bring the furnace walls up to temperature. Then the power is backed off to 20% for a further 26-hour period in which the 7.5 ton load (the product to be heat treated) comes up to the desired temperature.

Notice how the power input stays constant throughout the latter 26-hour heating period despite this massive 7.5 ton load coming up to nearly the same temperature as the oven and backradiating all of that EMR to the furnace walls?

It's only the amount of heat loss to the outside of the furnace that the power needs to supply. The reverberation of EMR within a system neither adds nor subtracts from the energy content. This is empirical evidence against the greenhouse effect.

During the daytime earth's atmosphere provides cooling. In the daytime sun some water placed in beer bottle with the backside painted black will heat to over 64C in a vacuum sleeve. The same bottle will without the vacuum will heat to just 41C.

(Data at Green Power Science here.)

(Also, for reference, the equilibrium temperature of a sphere in the direct sun from ground to space here. From here.)

Without the atmosphere it would be about as hot as the surface of the moon where the daytime temperature is 107C. From 107C to 64C shows the shielding effect of earth's atmosphere.

Convection and thermal inertia (thermal mass) of the atmosphere takes the temperature down even lower than the 64C mentioned above.

CO₂ absorbs all its EMR within the first 10 - 25 metres. (1,2,3) The slight warming that this creates is meaningless by the time you move upward in the atmosphere where the vertical temperature gradient dominates.

You could argue that the slight warming of air above from CO₂absorption causes a shallower temperature gradient and so slows convection. But observe that regardless of the temperature on or near the ground -- from 50C in a desert to -40C in Antarctica -- when you move up to a certain height the vertical temperature and gradient is the same (depending on latitude).

Moving upward from the ground there is a negative temperature gradient -- the air gets cooler with altitude by about 6.5C per km.

The real mystery to me is what creates this vertical temperature gradient. It dominates over the slight CO₂ warming that occurs with 25 metres of the ground.

Seeing as heat can not flow from a cooler object to a warmer one (even with backradiation) the upper layers of troposphere can't warm the warmer surface. The exception to this is the temperature inversion that occurs below 2km at night and occasionally during the day.

A temperature inversion is the only way there can be a greenhouse effect. Then the air above can warm the ground below. But even then it is a passive slower of heat and, while it might keep it from getting colder at night, it can't make the earth 33C warmer than it otherwise would be. And the occasional daytime temperature inversion is not going to create the 33C warming attributed to the greenhouse effect.

As mentioned above every EMR absorber is equally well an emitter by Kirchhoff's law. Carbon dioxide emits just as much as it absorbs unless it is changing temperature. But it isn't changing temperature that much as being only 380 parts in every million the warming effect is minuscule and can't significantly warm the air compared to the energy delivered by convection and water evaporation.

The following is a graph of EMR taken over the Arctic taken from the SkepticalScience website. It seems to show a lowered emissivity for the earth due to "energy blockers":

It shows the emission and absorption at CO₂ absorbing frequencies centered around a wavelength of 15 µm.

It looks like a mirror image in the CO₂ absorption zone with energy reflected down. It's really that the atmosphere is optically thick at those frequencies of light and looking up from the ground you see the downward component of a unidirectional emission of CO₂ and H₂O from the warmer, lower layer. Looking down from high above you see emission from the cooler, upper troposphere.

What we are really seeing in the above is not energy blocking but the point of emission being moved from the earth's surface where it is warmer to the upper troposphere where it is cooler.

Yet even this vertical displacement can't make the earth warmer because emission and absorption is not an "energy blocker" like a lowered emissivity could be said to be.

An interesting thing to do with the above graph from SkepticalScience would be to turn the sensor on the ground facing down instead of up and turn the sensor at 20km facing up instead of down to demonstrate how the CO₂ is emitting as much as it is absorbing at every altitude.

This visualisation can be approximated by a handy modtran simulator at the University of Chicago. With it you can alter CO₂, humidity, clouds, ground temperature, etc.

Enter the webpage above and change nothing in the left pane except the humidity to zero and hit "Submit the Calculation" and you get the following graph:

1. Iout, W / m² = 345.714
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 70 km
Looking down, no clouds, rel. humidity = 0, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

In this graph the higher frequencies are on the right. The divot in the middle centered on 670 wavenumber is the CO₂ absorption with "wings" -- a widened absorption area. H₂O absorption also overlaps a bit with this CO₂ absorption.

Now in our model let's increase the CO₂ to 10,000ppm CO₂:

2. Iout, W / m² = 324.048
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 70 km
Looking down, no clouds, rel. humidity = 0, tropical latitude
CO₂ 10,000ppm:

It says there's 21 less W/m² emitted into space. The wings of absorption get greater. And so, earth should get warmer. But is emittancy really the only factor that cools the earth?

Back to normal CO₂, let us now add 100% relative humidity water vapour to it:

3. Iout, W / m² = 287.844
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 70 km
Looking down, no clouds, rel. humidity = 1, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

A 58 W/m² less emittancy for 0 to 100% humidity compared to a 21 W/m² difference from 375 to 10,000ppm CO₂. So, water vapour is much more powerful than CO₂. But while no one is suggesting increases in CO₂ to 10,000ppm, changes in relative humidity from zero to 100%, or parts in between, happen regularly on earth and yet it does not boil up.

Water vapour does change adiabatic cooling rates but not because of the greenhouse effect but the latent heat of condensation. Charts of adiabatic cooling do not take into account greenhouse gases.

If EMR was the only way that heat was dissipated from the surface then clouds, which block EMR, would cause tremendous warming.

At night clouds keeps us warm through a slightly lowered emissivity/increased reflectivity and by blocking convection but this won't make the planet warmer than it otherwise would be. During the day clouds make us cooler, not warmer, by reflecting sunlight up.

At the very periphery of earth's atmosphere EMR is the only heat output. It is only at the periphery of an object where emissivity can make a difference to the object as a whole. But the emissivity at the edge says nothing of the heat flow within the material.

Let us explore this with the modtran simulator by adding a thick layer of clouds:

4. Iout, W / m² = 290.858
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 70 km
Looking down, cumulus clouds base 0.66km top 2.7km, rel. humidity = 0, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm

Now the emittancy has gone down by a whopping 55 W/m² compared to run 1 above. According to Hansen et al 1 W/m² = 3/4 of a degree C. So 55 W/m² change will cause a 41C temperature increase!? Ask yourself does this happen when there's thick cloud over a large area, day or night?

So far every modtran graph I have provided has been at the sensor height of 70km looking down over the tropics. To prove my point that the lowered emittance is due to the height at which the emission takes place we can view the emission spectrum from varying altitudes.

First it's useful to note in the right hand pane along with the emission curve there is another graph underneath with the air temp and the concentration of some gases.

5. Iout, W / m² = 395.012
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 5 km
Looking down, no clouds, no humidity, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

Wavelengths of the window frequencies are affected by atmospheric conditions like clouds and water vapour. Although most of the EMR comes from the ground at window frequencies it still doesn't mean that that EMR is the main mode of transmission through the atmosphere. For example, the top of the clouds will merely replace the ground as the blackbody radiator. This is because convection and water evaporation are valves that offset CO₂-global-warming-by-absorption.

Where the absorption valley bottoms out in the graph of greenhouse gas absorption represents the height that the emission takes place. Even with 10,000ppm of CO₂ in the air the temperature line that the valley bottoms out at is the same because there is saturation for CO₂ absorption/emission even at 375ppm; the valley just broadens with more greenhouse gas it doesn't deepen.

What you get is the bottom of the valley, no matter the greenhouse gas concentration, follows the temperature gradient for that height of emission (green line above).

5 km looking down:

6. Iout, W / m² = 395.012
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 5 km
Looking down, no clouds, no humidity, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

At 5km the width of the valley is already at what it is at 70 km looking down (test run 1) while the bottom of the absorption valley is near the temperature for 5km altitude.

The knee of the temperature graph is about at 17 km in the modtran model. This gives the lowest, deepest value for the valley because the air is at its lowest temperature at that height.

7. Iout, W / m² = 347.284
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 17 km
Looking down, no clouds, no humidity, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

Moving up again in altitude raises the bottom of that valley to the temp at the height above 17km:

8. Iout, W / m² = 345.4
Ground T, K = 299.70
Sensor altitude = 40 km
Looking down, no clouds, no humidity, tropical latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

With the atmosphere thinning out above that height the EMR pretty much stays constant with height after about 35 km.

But it's interesting that above the 17km temperature knee in the modtran model despite the presence of CO₂ the emission increases with altitude for about 18 km (from 17 to 35 km altitude). Thus showing that CO₂ is a good emitter.

Above the altitude at which convection and adiabatic cooling dominates (which is the troposphere) CO₂ assists the emission of EMR to space.

Over Antarctica on a very cold day (I tweaked it to the record -89C!) you can see that even if the ground gets cold CO₂ is still emitting more warmly than the ground:

9. Iout, W / m² = 73.036
Ground T, C = -89
Sensor altitude = 70 km
Looking down, no clouds, no humidity, arctic latitude
CO₂ 375ppm:

Notice how the top of the hill which replaces the valley in previous graphs is near that same yellow 220K blackbody line that the valley bottomed out at even though the ground is at -89C? The emission temperature of the CO₂ is the same regardless of the ground temperature.

(One could argue that I am pushing the limit of the modtran model above with this, although I did find this graph (from here) with a similar emission shape to test run 9.)

And, as well as its increased emissivity, due to the increased adiabatic cooling rate of CO₂ compared to O₂ and N₂ it may offset the slight warming of the lower atmosphere to provide a net cooling effect. At least one model in agreement with this is here: THE “GREENHOUSE” EFFECT.

With the cooler atmosphere backradiating less longwave radiation than is outbound you could say that heat loss is slowed down by a lower flux of EMR. The IPCC predicts a modest warming of 1C for a doubling of CO₂.

But daily fluctuations of 50C or more in some places make no difference to the sign of, or above a certain height the magnitude of, the vertical temperature gradient. It shows that convection and evaporation of water convey more heat in the troposphere than EMR and therefore neutralise the slight greenhouse warming in the very lower portion.

In conclusion, whatever greenhouse warming there is it still won't make the earth as a whole warmer than it would be otherwise because the greenhouse effect can't can't generate extra energy or a higher temperature like a lowered emissivity can. Whatever slight warming there is all washes out in the mix compared to daily and seasonal temperatures which vary widely.

If this negative temperature gradient didn't dominate so over greenhouse warming there would be a hot spot such as explained on the JoNova website.

Energy blocking and reabsorbing is not a mechanism of storing energy nor of increased temperature. The reason for what creates the negative vertical temperature gradient and the supposed 33C warming is to be explored in a follow-up post.

Further Reading:

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/31/does-co₂-heat-the-troposphere/

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-heat-doesnt-flow-from-cold-to-hot.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/physicist-co2-greenhouse-effect-is.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2009/11/greenhouse-gas-theory-violates-2nd-law.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/rescue-from-climate-saviors.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/greenhouse-theory-disproven-in-1909.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/agw-myth-of-back-radiation.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-conventional-greenhouse-theory.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/05/nasas-earth-energy-budget-contradicts.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/07/u-mass-hasnt-heard-of-1st-law-of.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/07/agw-is-science-fiction-hiding-behind.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-greenhouse-gases-wont-heat-oceans.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-agw-hot-spot-wont-happen.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-greenhouse-effect-is-based-on-cool.html

http://www.ke-research.de/downloads/climateSaviors-1-1.pdf

http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/greenhouse-effect-vs.-gravity---guest-post-by-roy-clark-201.php

http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_on_the_Moon.pdf

http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/06/moon-effect-called-greenhouse-effect-on.html

http://www.spinonthat.com/CO2_files/The_Diurnal_Bulge_and_the_Fallacies_of_the_Greenhouse_Effect.html

http://vipclubmn.org/Documents/GlobalWarmingArticle.pdf

THE “GREENHOUSE” EFFECT

Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission

http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/TheGreenhouseHustle.pdf

http://nov55.com/gbwg.html (link is broken)

http://nov55.com/ntyg.html (link is broken)

Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres

Greenland is not melting

2010-08-12T15:44:00.060+10:00

A 20km-wide iceberg broke off a Greenland ice shelf recently. It has been used by the media as a powerful emblem in their coverage of global warming. But there's a huge irony here. Because, if anything, a larger iceberg is indicative of more snowfall and greater ice mass rather than warming temperature -- more snow and ice making for a faster flow and huger ice blocks. Warmer temperatures would cause the opposite to this, with the ice receding, and hence less ice for breaking off into big chunks.

(photo via Watts Up With That.)

The iceberg broke off in an inlet of water of the Arctic Sea in the north of Greenland. It is a piece of ice shelf; a tongue of ice that floats over seawater supplied by the mass of land ice behind it. It is more melted and dissipated by sea water than by air temperature. From wiki:

"...Rough mass balance estimates using these scales suggest that about 80% of its mass is lost as basal meltwater..."

Therefore, if it is breaking off huge chunks it's more likely to mean that the ice is moving faster and not having time to melt into the sea. Please don't be alarmed, though, by the fact that it is "moving faster". This sort of change is more likely to be caused by more snow accumulation, not "melting" as interpreted by the alarmist media.

The ice shelf normally creeps forward at around 1km per year. But, this varies and it has been going faster for a number of years.

Government-sponsored science prefers to focus on the slight increase in melting at the edges of Greenland during the warming of the late 20th century:

There are wild claims of ice loss in Greenland. But these focus on the extra melting caused by warmth and ignore the extra snow accumulation on top. As I show below there's more snowfall during warmer periods.

The Greenland ice sheet was gaining mass according to satellite altimetry up to the year 2003:

There is newer satellite data from NASA from 2003 that contradict the older results up to 2003. Given NASA's tweaking of the ERBE satellite results and GISS's upward tweaking of land temps I wouldn't trust them on these latest Greenland ice loss claims.

As I said above: a bigger iceberg should imply more snowfall, not global warming. Having said that though, break-offs can be influenced by any number of local conditions such as ocean currents and ocean temperature and wind.

Temperatures are actually cooling the last few years on Greenland (1,2,3) and this will slow the ice melt.

Prior to these last 3 years of cooling, during the warmer period of the 1990's and early 2000's, the Greenland ice sheet was affected by warming temperatures, causing it to lose mass at the edges and gain it in the middle.

This is to be expected for a slight warming: more melting (ablation) around the edges and more precipitation on top in the form of snow.

When it comes to glacier flow it's important to recognize that ice is a thermal insulator. The bottom layer and all layers on top except for the very top-most layer are immune to air temperatures.

The two main things that can make a glacier flow faster are increased ice mass and geothermal heat. A minor influence can come from plate tectonics like earthquakes and volcanoes. It is also possible that with enough liquid precipitation or melting, streams of water can have an influence.

But, Greenland is so cold there isn't much meltwater or rain except in summer and even then not enough to endanger it. And, in any case Greenland isn't as vulnerable to liquid water streams as, say, equatorial glaciers for reasons explained presently.

There are two types of glacier, warm and cold. Warm glaciers occur in the tropics and temperate regions. Mountain glaciers in New Zealand are a good example of a warm glacier. Warm glaciers move faster and are possibly more affected by liquid rain and meltwater. This is because the core temperatures in warm glaciers are closer to 0C -- the freezing point of water. The warmer ice has lower viscosity and the warmer air temperatures can sublimate the ice quicker, so they are more vulnerable to climate change.

By contrast, in cold glaciers like Greenland and Antarctica the ice moves more slowly, has less heat for lubrication, and is less susceptible to the spreading of liquid streams.

(Picture from Daily Mail)

The property of being a warm or cold glacier occurs as it is being formed. If it is formed under cold conditions, for example, it will still be a cold glacier even if the air temperature outside was to suddenly increase. This due to the insulating effect of ice.

A glacier is not going to melt from the bottom up even if there is a bit of liquid (in the form of water) conveying heat to parts of it underneath its surface.

AGW scientists claim that the water from the moulins can spread across the bottom of the ice sheet and lubricate its movement.

I'm no glaciologist but I don't see how this sheeting of water at the bottom can occur. Surely if the water was somehow able to sheet across the bottom it would refreeze under the intense cold and pressure.

Glaciers move forward through viscous flow not by lubrication from water. (Video here.)

The intense pressure causes the normally solid ice to act viscously like a fluid. Heat can lubricate this flow by making the solid ice less viscous. Liquid is not required to lubricate glaciers to make them move. In any case the liquid water wouldn't lubricate due to the intense pressure from the ice. Water does not act like a lubricant under these conditions. (Just on that point, an ice skater doesn't glide over the ice by melting the ice under the blade of the skate but rather, because the solid ice transforms viscously under pressure and allows such movement.)

The glacier is just as frozen on the bottom as it is in the middle (aside from a slight warming due to geothermal heat -- see graph below). And Greenland sits in a basin making the bottom of the ice sheet below sea-level. Even if you could lubricate the bottom through heat from the atmosphere or water it would still not flow uphill!

So, the scientists' claims of global warming causing a surging in the glacier flow are not true. It's mainly extra ice mass from snowfall and other factors that cause the surging.

Coming back to the insulating property of ice, it is such a good insulator that it retains traces of the physical temperature from thousands of years ago. It takes hundreds or thousands of years for atmospheric temperature changes to be reflected deep down. A sudden increase will not melt them!

This NASA webpage shows how the physical temperature influence of the air at the time of deposition is retained in the ice for thousands of years in Greenland. It's not going to melt anytime soon even if air temps go up!

Greenland and Antarctica are secure in their position inside the polar circles. The large land ice sheets of the last ice age in Canada and Eurasia outside the Arctic Circle melted away thousands of years ago.

The Holocene period has been mostly warmer than today for 12,000 years. If Greenland and Antarctica were going to melt they would have done so by now. The Medieval Warm Period would have melted them. The Roman Thermal Optimum would have melted them. But they didn't.

A Penn State colleague of Michael Mann, Richard Alley, recently testified to the US Congress that a 2 - 7C temp increase could melt Greenland's ice in a matter of decades flooding the world. This is an unbelievable distortion.

Following is a graph which shows why we need not fear warming melting the polar ice caps. For warmth has the effect of increasing the precipitation on the ice sheets:

(From webpage here. By the way, this graph is from the same Richard Alley mentioned above that testified to Congress that a 2 - 7C temp increase would melt Greenland! Of all people he should know better -- that warmth increases the snow and hence the ice sheet!!)

Greenland and Antarctica basically operate at ice load saturation. They have as much ice as they will hold with the excess creeping forward and breaking off into the sea, such as we see presently with this Greenland ice calve.

With Greenland and Antarctica safely tucked within their polar circles warmth can only increase the ice mass (due to precipitation), not decrease it as the above graph shows. With average temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic well below freezing, a 2C temperature increase is not going to melt all that ice anyway. Greenland creates its own zone of cool temperature that carries through even in the summer months:

Antarctica's ice sheets are secure even if there were to be a few degrees temperature rise in air.

Glaciers are the product of an ever-changing equilibrium between ice loss at the edge and ice gain on top from snow.

As long as the snowfall continues to rise when it gets warm as it has in the past Greenland will not melt and Al Gore won't have to sell his recently acquired California beachfront property!

People's Commission on Climate Change

2010-07-25T22:02:00.008+10:00

The Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard has advocated a people's political council for climate change; rather like ruling commissars are appointed in totalitarian and communist countries. Who will be selected? What will be the criteria?

Well, they do claim that it is a random selection. Random, really? I'd like to see that. Will it be random including people who don't care about climate change or politics or public policy? Fat chance. It will be people who are interested in the "climate change issue" and who are interested in setting public policy. It is a people's governing council and it is unelected.

Julia Gillard will today pledge to set up a Citizens' Assembly to spend 12 months examining the evidence on climate change...

What is the Parliament for if not an ongoing council? Why are so-called random people the right people for the job? It sounds ludicrous.

Local administrators and officials are selected without the will of the people in this country. This is fair enough, we need people who can do the job they are appointed to do and that should be sufficient criteria to hold the job. But if they are formulating policy this is another matter.

If the Prime Minister was calling this a focus group that would be one thing. A one-off community consultation is fine. But, an ongoing board with the same people forming government policy....it is something Australia has never had before and it is undemocratic. This is the way they rule in communist countries like China.

It seems the Labor government wants this country to become more and more like China. They want a Chinese-style Internet filter where another People's Board of Classification will decide what information we are privy to. And the sacked PM Kevin Rudd was very enthusiastic about signing Australia's sovereignty away to an unelected UN world government in the climate change Copenhagen Treaty. He is still eying a job in the UN world bureaucracy as a top-level adviser on climate change. Nothing like jobs for the boys.

Labor oversaw the introduction of X-ray naked body scanners at our airports which store a naked image of you and your family on a computer and increase your cancer risk. And Labor has masterminded a scheme to introduce a tracking device to every person's car under the guise of a saving fatalities at level rail crossings.

It's time for a change of government. (And the Greens are no solution either. They are even more extreme in their climate views and want to use it as a tool to bring in world government, though they call it global governance). Don't just sack the PM Australia, sack Labor.

Penny Wong regularly consults WWF

2010-06-26T02:15:00.015+10:00

From the Sydney Morning Herald, June 26, 2010:

"The heads of the WWF, Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Institute had all met Rudd's advisers and the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, several times over the past fortnight."

Wow, so that's where Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd get their ideas on global warming from. Straight from the horse's mouth. Environmental activist group WWF was founded by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Prince Phillip of England to promote the anti-human population reduction policies of the eugenicist Huxley family.

So, they get the ear of the high chiefs of carbon policy? Dirty, New World Order scum, and they're best mates with Australia's government. It's not surprising to me.

You will submit to the carbon tyranny scum. Like Bill Gates said with good vaccines we can get the population down by 10 to 15 percent. Well done Bill. Instead of helping countries develop economically with your great wealth you want to stop them from developing because of the bogus CO2 threat and reduce their population through population control techniques at the same time. What an evil ratbag.

Coming back to the Australian article, the other thing that's in there is this prevalent Australian media spin that Rudd's losing support because he abandoned climate change action not because he championed it:

"The government had been bleeding support since April when it shelved its carbon emissions trading scheme until 2013."

I'm sure that some Labor voters are disillusioned by Rudd's deferral of the ETS. But, I bet that far more are upset because of the ETS. That's Australian media spin for you. It's all a psychological operation.

Global warming is the excuse for population reduction. The environment was the designated threat to bring in the world government that the New World Order and Bilderbergs like Bill Gates and Ted Turner have dreamed of all these years. The Club of Rome, the Sierra Club, the WWF, the British Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, etc, etc: they love control and to kill a human is the ultimate form of control.

And that's who the Australian government and Julia Gillard and Bob Brown are friends with.

Latest round of global warming scandals

2010-06-11T18:05:00.002+10:00

It's getting hard to keep up!

NASA: suppressed a formula they came up with for the Apollo moon landings that shows that earth has much less greenhouse effect than admitted to.

Pacific islands growing not sinking.

Australiagate with BOM faking upward trends in temperature data like the New Zealanders at NIWA did.

And to top it off the director of U of Penn Law School said that climate science is biased and does not follow normal scientific procedure.

What causes the CO2 increase?

2010-05-31T23:06:00.067+10:00

What causes the CO2 increase of 110 parts per million from the year 1850 to 2010? Is it human made or natural?

The Keeling Curve is perhaps the premier piece of global warming propaganda.

Its coincidence with the graph of human emissions over the same 50 year time period contributes to the impression that humans are causing the carbon dioxide increase.

Dave Keeling searched for years before finding the site with the desired properties at the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

CO2 is a heavy gas, preferring the ground to high altitudes. Strong daily circulation currents go up about 1 - 2 kms. The Mauna Loa site in Hawaii is chosen to be above this area of maximum CO2 activity. Elevation has a smoothing effect on the variations of CO2.

See also: Wisconsin Tower (below).

Keeling carefully selected his site at 3,400 metres to naturally smooth the curve making it appear coincidental to human CO2 emissions since 1850.

It is also selected to be in the middle of the world's largest ocean so as to be dominated by the ocean signal.

All of the measuring sites of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography are located close to the ocean.

This is for a reason: oceans readily dissolve carbon dioxide and so smooth the natural variations giving rise to the so-called background amount. The oceans control the amount of CO2 that's in air by an equilibrium of emission and absorption governed by the equation:

CO2(g) <==> CO2(aq)

The CO2 measured at Mauna Loa is technically true for that area (not withstanding artificial adjustments which I'll explain below), but to claim that it's representative of the whole Earth is global warming propaganda. There can be quite substantial variations in the lower troposphere that Mauna Loa never picks up.

CO2 doesn't mix well and can be chunky. It can take 50 years for CO2 from the northern hemisphere to reach the southern hemisphere. (See: Study of hemispheric CO2 timing...).

When you read the so-called global average given on the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory website what you're getting is the average of marine surface sites. As I mentioned, due to the immense solubility of carbon dioxide in water the oceans smooth variations in the signal and this is the reason for the site selection. There could be all sorts of variation of CO2 on land and we wouldn't know based on this specially prepared analysis by Scripps, NOAA etc.

On land the CO2 can vary by 100ppm in a day. E.g. compare Diekirch, Luxembourg to Mauna Loa:

It can change by ~100ppm in minutes depending on wind speed and direction.

Over Wisconsin Tower CO2 can be very high in concentration in the morning in summer.

So, while it's true to say that Mauna Loa measures a background level it ignores the fluctuations that can happen in the lower 2 kms of the troposphere and over land. Mauna Loa is good for trends but masks a lot of the true story close to the ground and over land.

Historical measurements show much less smoothness and continuity as the specially smoothed Mauna Loa curve. You see the very flat linear shape at Mauna Loa in the middle of the Pacific (green line) compared to sites near the Atlantic and high continental mountains (red line):

Furthermore, by using the Mauna Loa site adjustments can be made every time CO2 levels go out of bounds with the variations blamed on the nearby Mauna Loa volcano or wind. The Mauna Loa measurements and all contemporary carbon dioxide measurements made by Scripps and other authorities exclude variations of CO2 outside a certain bound. So, CO2 measurements appear much smoother than they really are. Again, nothing deceptive in and of itself, but if you pretend that this is the whole story for the whole world it is disingenuous because there is a conscious attempt to match the measured CO2 curve to human industrial output.

There are around 38,000 billion tonnes of carbon in the ocean waters.

Judging by the area under the following graph total cumulative contribution of humans from the year 1850 to today is approximately 1.18 trillion tonnes CO2.

Using the above chart for carbon fluxes and stores and converting it to a CO2 equivalent there are 150.33 Tt CO2 in ocean, air and soils. This is the CO2 that's in regular flux in the biosphere.

1.18 Tt CO2 human ÷ 150.33 Tt CO2 nature = a 0.78% increase. Given the rapid solubility of CO2 in water a 0.78% increase can not lead to a 40% increase in the air.

With nature's huge sources and sinks is it not more reasonable to suggest that a small change in the natural equilibrium causes the CO2 increase?

Swedish climate expert Dr. Fred Goldberg estimates that humans contribute 4% to the carbon dioxide that's currently in air.

The current rise of CO2 from the year 1850 of 110ppm can be fully explained by supposing an increase of 1C in ocean temperature due to the reduced solubility of CO2 in warmer water.

Real Climate wants us to believe that nature causes the large seasonal variation in CO2 but has nothing to do with the yearly increase. If Real Climate was right and dC13 is a human signature then the graph of the dC13 would look like a fairly straight line like human emissions. Instead, it takes the shape of the natural seasonal variations.

Past CO2 concentrations varied by 100ppm by itself without human intervention. It appears ocean heat releases the CO2 with a time delay of about 800 years.

And, a study by Jaworowski in Antarctica suggests that past CO2 variations were even greater than 100ppm and have been minimised by contamination of ice core samples and CO2 loss in the ice over time. (More references here)

The solubility of CO2 in the oceans is nowhere near saturation and has plenty of capability to absorb our CO2. Our cumulative emissions are small: less than 1% of the natural ocean store. Given the oceans massive reserve and high flux with the atmosphere, dissolved CO2 and carbonates in the ocean seems the most likely source of the CO2 increase.

Is warmth bad?

2010-05-09T13:47:00.022+10:00

Let us assume global warming is real. Is such warmth bad?

There's no correlation between warmer temperature and bad weather. Yes, there is more energy with more heat but that doesn't necessarily mean bad weather.

This decade just passed was supposedly the warmest in 130 years yet there was no corresponding increase in hurricanes, tornadoes or bad weather.

GISS global temp followed by two graphs of hurricane activity.

Tornadoes in US decreasing:

There's no anecdotal or physical evidence to suggest that that the medieval warm period had worse weather than today. In fact all accounts are that warmth is good.

Some AGW adherents fear glaciers melting. Warmth does melt glaciers, however glaciers are an equilibrium between ice loss and precipitation. Increased melting can be offset by an increase in precipitation.

Greenland is losing some mass at the edges but is gaining mass in the middle due to precipitation.

This is exactly what you'd expect from warmer temperatures: ice loss at the edge but more replenishment on top from snow. I've seen AGW graphs that show the ice loss at the edges but ignore the replenishment on top from snow.

The real danger is dryness and that's what the ice ages are associated with.

The New World Order environmental world government should have stuck with their global cooling scare of the 1970's. We have much to fear from an ice age. During ice ages the climate oscillates wildly by 8 degrees Celsius.

During an ice age there's less moisture to create the negative feedback mechanisms that keeps the temperature in a small range -- clouds and water vapour and evaporation. The oceans become lower and saltier. There is less rain. There is more hardship. There are huge ice sheets that chew up land in the northern hemisphere. There would be millions of climate refugees. An ice age is everything that Al Gore says global warming would be but for real: gloom, doom, war, famine and hardship.

This current interglacial is the respite from the elements humans needed to domesticate plants and animals and create civilisation. Of course, the warmers want to turn back the clock on human civilisation, consumption and comfort and so on, so it's no surprise to hear them shun life-giving warmth for death-conducive cold.

Earth has been 10C warmer through most of last 500 million years:

(Source: Scotese with my own annotations.)

The dinosaurs thrived under hot conditions for 180 million years.

In the long run we would be better off if the polar ice caps melted completely.

Since Antarctica covered the pole of the south 60 million years ago the world has been beset by coldness and a more variable climate. There's nothing that AGW or anything else can do to move Antarctica off the pole any time soon and thus warm up the climate up to a more desirable level.

Even the IPCC has doubts about the threats posed by warmth because it's not clear what the effect of cloud feedbacks are. There was their recent embarrassing back-down regarding catastrophic weather events being linked to global warming.

AGW scientists admit that global warming is uneven; their climate models show there would be more warming at the poles than the tropics.

FIG: Surface air temperature change in the two solstice seasons when using doubled-CO2 sea surface temperatures as calculated in the GISS (DBL CO2) and GFDL (ALT) models circa early–mid-1980s. [From Rind (1987).]

Even CRU/hockey team mouthpiece Realclimate admits it:

"..global warming is expected to warm the polar regions faster than the lower latitudes, hence reducing the meridional (north-south) temperature differences (gradient)"

And less temperature difference between cold and warm areas makes for more peaceful weather.

So, taking hurricanes as an example: AGW sources often talk of how increased sea surface temperatures increase the likelihood of hurricanes. But, that's only part of the story. It's not just the temperature of the water but the temperature of the air as well. It's the difference between the water and the air:

"A hurricane's strength depends on the temperature contrast between the ocean's water and the air high in the atmosphere, at the storm's top. If the world's oceans warm up, it's also possible that the upper atmosphere will also warm up. The result could be temperature contrasts much like those now. In other words, warmer oceans wouldn't necessarily mean more frequent or stronger hurricanes." - Doyle Rice, the USA TODAY weather editor.

Without cold air blasting out of the north there won't be enough temperature difference between the warm, moist air rising from tropical seas and the air higher up to allow clouds to form. Without water vapour condensing to clouds there is no energy released from the latent heat of water vapour and hence no power for the hurricanes.

As long as the sea surface temperature is above 27C there is potential to form a hurricane. However, if the air temperature is increased as well as the sea surface temp it will take power away from the hurricane. Since AGW theory says that the atmosphere is warming the oceans, warming of the air must come before the warming of the oceans. Therefore, there is no increase in difference between upper layers of air and warm, humid air rising from the oceans. That only one element of the hurricane issue, ocean temps, is presented and not the relative temperature necessary for water vapour condensation is typical of the one-sidedness of AGW science.

You could argue that natural cooling cycles in the air will exacerbate hurricanes because of the ocean's overall warming. But the oceans are cooling. Kevin Trenberth was mighty upset at the missing heat. Missing because they believe in AGW but the observations aren't showing the warming despite rising CO2 levels. In any case it's still not established that CO2 causes the upward temps of the air.

AGW source environment.about.com admits there are other causes to the observed hurricane activity in the last few decades:

"Other scientists believe that the increase in severe hurricanes over the past decade is due to natural salinity and temperature changes deep in the Atlantic—part of a natural environmental cycle that shifts back and forth every 40-60 years."

It's linked to El Nino and other cycles.

Please stop this insane form of thermophobia -- the fear of warmth. It's just an excuse to put forward a political agenda.

Update 15 July 2010:

An interesting article in the Vancouver Sun discusses how cold times in the past were bad for humans in China:

Cooling caused wars and drought in China - study

The article is laced with AGW overtones. This is despite this information being at odds with AGW because it shows that warming is not bad -- cooling is.

Consider this: in higher latitudes, away from the tropics, there is worse weather in the winter. This is because the pole gets colder and there is a greater difference between the temperature of the pole and the tropics.

I was reminded of this fact by the story of the American sailor girl who hit rough weather in the Indian Ocean. a few weeks ago and had to be rescued. I thought to myself, why is there worse weather during the Southern Ocean during the southern winter? According to AGW more heat means worse weather but winter has less heat and worse weather. Then I realised it was the temperature difference.

Of course, that makes sense because heat on its own doesn't do anything. There must be a displacement of this heat through non-equilibrium with its surroundings. More heat itself doesn't create energy displacement; differences do.

Hence my claim that temperature difference is more important than total temperature in creating bad weather is proven each and every six months with the changing!

Let them eat whale

2010-04-25T05:04:00.046+10:00

If they have no meat let them eat whale.

I don't have a particular interest to try whale meat myself. But lots of people like it. It's part of a traditional diet in many native communities and East Asia. I don't think western tastes should be imposed on these communities.

Whale hunting has been badly mismanaged by humans who have hunted many species to near extinction. It is good that there's a ban on hunting blue and other endangered whales and that more responsibility is now shown for managing whale numbers. The environmental movement should receive their due credit for their role in this. "To hunt a species to extinction is illogical." - Spock.

But a total whaling ban takes it too far. Activism becomes dogma and religion when whaling is banned at all costs including to the whales themselves. The Wiki page on whaling explains that a lot of people support a ban on whaling because they believe it is immoral regardless of whether populations can support hunting. I disagree.

The Japanese and Norwegians wish to hunt minke whale. That's a medium size whale with a healthy population that competes with the endangered blue whale for food resources. If the population can support hunting let them be hunted.

Presently whaling for meat is supposed to be illegal. But a sort of loophole exists where a limited hunt for a few hundred minke whales each year takes place under the guise of scientific research.

Japan whaling:

We know it's a farce because if it was really for scientific research the meat wouldn't be allowed to be sold for human consumption. Instead of continuing the charade let's let it take place above board rather than pretend it is for science. By having everything out in the open it might actually lead to more honest reporting of hunting and better management.

Blue whales were hunted from 150,000 in number to just a few hundred before the ban. At the same time the smaller minke whales weren't as popular for hunters and their numbers ballooned to 10 times what they were before blue whales were hunted. Current estimates for minke whale population is about 1.5 million individuals. Minke whales compete with blue whales for the food krill. By allowing whale hunting again it could help to bring back the blue whales.

There's nothing wrong with humans managing natural populations of animals. It is not unnatural for humans to kill or cull animals. Humans have been wiping out species and managing wild populations for millennia. Some of the megafauna that humans wiped out could be very destructive to people and property if they were still around today. From the point of view of the day-to-day living of humans the extinction of many of these species is not at all unwelcome.

Environmentalists such as the Pew Environment Group try to spin the story of the overabundance of minke whales not impacting on the recovery of blue whale species. Environmentalists don't really care about the environment but the feel good factor and imposing their ideological agenda. Wind mills are a good example.

They kill birds and are wasteful of resources and don't even provide reliable power. The ban of minke whaling is another example. Large whales like the blue whale are negatively impacted by the ban on commercial minke whaling. But it's not about the logical management of whale populations to enviro-activists but imposing the idea that all whaling is morally wrong regardless of the actual impact to the various whales and the environment. It's a matter of ideology, not the environment.

Meat eaters: why feel sorry for a whale but not the other animals that you eat?

The latest twist from the global warming/climate change/save the whales crew is that whale poo is crucial to sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Whale poop is vital to ocean's carbon cycle

And modern AGW theory is that CO2 is a danger so we need to be scared if CO2 goes up. But nature takes care of how much CO2 is in air. Our contributions are puny. We do need life to manage the carbon cycle and whales play their part. But so does everything. It is reasonable to extract some resources.

In high school I was indoctrinated to believe that the ecosystem was a fragile thing and that if one imbalance is brought in or one species goes extinct the whole thing falls apart. Now that I've been able to unindoctrinate myself I realise that the ecosystem is not fragile but that life is actually the most robust thing going on this planet. Five major extinctions and it's still here going as strong as ever. Maybe not in quite the same form, but in some form. Who's to say what the correct form of life is and what isn't? Who's to say what the right temperature is? Who's to say what the right level of CO2 is? We don't know.

When one species dies others moves in to fill the gap. And new species evolve rapidly to fill the niche in the ecosystem vacated by the last one. Let's face it most species are redundant. Take birds. If I was to take a half hour walk in my neighbourhood I could probably count 20 species of birds. A lot of them are similar shapes and sizes.

Magpies: they swoop you and I don't really care for them that much:

Crows look about the same to me and don't swoop you:

My guess is that if the magpies were wiped out their role in the ecosystem would be filled by crows and similar birds. There's a lot of redundancy.

Most of the species that ever existed are gone and it's a good thing. Small creatures like humans would not have been able to exist if the dinosaurs hadn't have gone extinct. Hooray for dinosaur extinction! Species extinction allows for other animals to evolve in their place.

I love life on planet Earth and it would be nice if the human population didn't encroach so much on natural habitats. I don't want to see species die, except the Australian magpie which is my cursed enemy. Seriously though, who wouldn't want the fun of a magpie swoop? It's part of being Australian. But, I'm not going to freak if some of these species go extinct either.

So, I think the hunt for whales should be based on science, not morals which change from person to person based on their ideology. Whales are no more or less special than other meat we eat. If minke whale numbers can support a hunt then let us hunt, eat and be merry.

I think some of the dancing and customs and beliefs of various people around the world are weird. I think eating whale meat is weird. Yet I don't feel the need to impose my morals, customs or beliefs on others. It would be a very boring world if everyone was like me.

P.S. I cringe when I hear Prime Minister Kevin Rudd threatening the Japanese with taking them to court over whaling. The Japanese have come a long way in their attitude to whaling. They'll never give it up but this isn't the 1800's any more Kev. Let's be pragmatic and flexible. What do you care about the whales anyway? Another populist move from the populist PM.

N-machine article in Magnets In Your Future 2

2010-04-16T23:18:00.001+10:00

This round-up of free energy research featuring the N-machine is from the now-defunct periodical Magnets In Your Future around 1992:

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N-machine article in Magnets In Your Future

2010-04-16T23:03:00.004+10:00

This article by Bruce DePalma in the magazine Magnets In Your Future would be from around 1990. I scanned this in to supplement the N-machine video I posted to YouTube. Unfortunately it's just a photocopy of this glossy colour magazine. Maybe someone has an original. The guy on the first page is professor Robert Kincheloe.

1 of 6:

photocopy

2 of 6:

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Switch your lights on for Earth Hour

2010-03-27T16:34:00.012+10:00

At 8:30 pm tonight (in your local time zone), 27 March, millions of believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) will switch off their lights. This will cause disruption at the supply end. See:

Earth Hour headache for power suppliers

In order to counteract this disruption to the power supply it is up to non-believers of AGW to switch on their appliances. Power stations that use boilers won't even save that much power during Earth Hour -- it will be wasted.

Earth Hour is the epitome of the stupidity of global warming environmentalism. Instead of finding a technical solution -- instead of free-energy or nuclear power or even traditional alternative energy like solar cells -- it's about switching off, curtailing and diminishing our quality of life. Who leaves stuff on they don't need anyway? Well, maybe Al Gore, but among normal people who wastes power that we get billed for? Therefore, whatever is on is needed. We use light to be productive and have quality of life and security.

There was a blackout in New York for a day in 1977. There was looting and vandalism and crime. Despite the huge government support for AGW even municipalities will not be brave enough to switch all street lighting off because it makes us less safe. It turns back the clock on our civilisation which is why it is such a good example of the mentality of environmentalists. If they like darkness so much let them move to North Korea or the Third World.

So, please turn your lights on and instead celebrate Human Achievement Hour.

Update, 8:55 pm: Earth Hour has started and the electricity grid hasn't broken down. Phew. Defiantly typing this on an electronic device. London Telegraph says Earth Hour won't save power. WWF admits it's symbolic.

Update 2: Someone else's better version of my post's sentiments: Opinion: does Earth Hour send the wrong message?

Update 3, 28 March: After the fact: Anthony Watts explains that it made no difference to demand and wouldn't have reduced CO2 emissions anyway because CO2 producing plants will keep their generation up based on expected demand not actual demand.

Kerrygolds comment removed from Guardian

2010-02-12T04:49:00.012+10:00

Kerrygold's comment I recommended was removed from the Guardian article China's fears of rich nation 'climate conspiracy' at Copenhagen revealed comments section.

I probably shouldn't post these because they might be copyright to the Guardian being in their comments section and all, but oh well, they deleted it. They can sue me in England.

I managed to capture this comment just before it was removed by a moderator:

Kerrygold
11 Feb 2010, 4:27PM

I have a lot more faith in China's analysis than that of Mark Lynas, who everybody knows is little more than a well paid lap dog for the Maldives. To deny that divide and rule was part of the American / EU strategy is to ignore a thousand years of diplomacy.

The only thing I think it can be is calling Lynas a lap dog. Serious?! Wow, that's touchy. Calling a public figure a lap dog is against Guardian policy? What, do they employ some zit-faced teenager who has no idea what libel is to delete anything remotely dodgy? This sort of moderation is over the top. "Lap dog"?? Big deal.

Update: Hah! Then a few hours later they removed my comment even though the first moderator who removed Kerrygold's did not. This is getting ridiculous. I'm stunned. Guardian really is worse than Chinese state media. Here is my comment which was right after Kerrygold's:

CarbonFooledYa
11 Feb 2010, 4:29PM

I'm glad that China realises that global warming is merely a political scam.

Lynas still going on about sea level rise? Do you think he was the one who advised Maldives to have that silly underwater cabinet?

We're told that global warming will melt the glaciers and lead to sea level rise. But then we're told (Time Magazine etc) that global warming is causing the snow storms in North America and Europe. If global warming increases precipitation near glaciers due to warming than this may, in fact, have the effect of building glaciers up. So, the above two claims are contradictory yet contemporary from global warming alarmists and the MSM!

Snow is how all glaciers are formed in the first place. It's actually how ice ages start. Increased precipitation gets trapped in glaciers thereby sucking the water out of the sea.

Clearly warming is too simplistic a model to determine glacier growth or decay. That's why the ocean level rise prophesies by AGWers never occurred during the Middle Ages Warm Period when it was 2C warmer or the Roman Thermal Optimum when it was 4C warmer. Crisis over.

This has really got me stumped. Why was my comment moderated? Surely this was purely political?

Danny Glover vindicated (well sort of)

2010-01-26T04:28:00.025+10:00

Like many others I had a good laugh when actor Danny Glover suggested the earthquake in Haiti was caused by climate change.

Actually I'm taking his comments a little out of context - he says disasters like this are due to the collapse of Copenhagen - which is still about as stupid. But it was unnecessary for him to mix the issue of Haiti with climate change.

Anyways, I was astonished to read the following article suggesting that it may be true - climate change did contribute to the Haiti earthquake. Of course, it was natural climate change that occurred 10,000 years ago when the ice sheets melted.

Should we blame the sun for global warming?

Here's how it works: when huge ice sheets build up on land the weight of the ice compresses the land which in turn slows the drift of tectonic plates - the latter being responsible for earthquakes. When the ice sheets of the last ice age melted it freed the plates to move around a bit more. So, Danny Glover's half right; it was contributed to by climate change - just not human-made climate change.

If you take a look at the following GPS chart of continental drift you'll see that the Antarctic plate is going nowhere and appears anchored to the spot by the world's biggest ice sheets. (1, 2)

Greenland and Antarctica are pushed down by the weight of the huge ice sheets so much that much of the land is actually below sea level.

Another thing I've heard suggested about that earthquake is that US nukes did it as a test run for using bunker busting nukes on Iran. To be honest that wouldn't surprise me, however Haiti is on three fault lines and so is prone to natural earthquakes without any assistance. You can check out the fault lines with a Google Earth plugin or use this viewer:

NASA and the case of the incredible falling satellite

2010-01-18T19:46:00.046+10:00

Well, it's been explained that Lindzen and Choi's July 2009 paper On the Determination of Climate Feedbacks was wrong because apparently the ERBE 2 satellite decayed in orbit from 1987 to 1993. Who would have known? NASA didn't according to them until 2006. Surprise, surprise the sudden realisation of the error just so happens to accentuate the runaway feedback postulated by the IPCC. See, if the satellite gets closer to earth it measures more outgoing infra red heat radiation and so inflates the values measured requiring an "adjustment". This "adjustment" cleverly detracts from the outgoing radiation as measured by Lindzen and Choi and so enhances the notion that all that nasty CO2 is trapping heat down here on earth and not escaping into outer space.

The above graph shows how NASA's whoopsy means that much less longwave (heat) radiation is escaping the earth and therefore staying here on earth to warm us. Edition 2 is original data, edition 3 is the new "value added" data from NASA to explain to us that global warming is real. Yes, I'm afraid the greenhouse effect is quite operational and ready to destroy planet earth...

It was raised by melty on Andrew Revkins Dotearth blog. He gave these links: 1, 2, 3.

There are two main objections. One explored by Roy Spencer on the statistical method used to draw averages. The second is that the satellite orbit decayed (link above). It's not for me to judge the statistical merits of averaging the data. But I find that the claim that the ERBE 2 satellite decayed in orbit without anyone knowing to be implausible.

From NASA:

"As the altitude dropped over the 15-yr period, the Nonscanner WFOV instrument recorded a small steady increase in satellite altitude fluxes....It was recently discovered that the altitude correction was disabled in the case of a near-circular orbit and therefore did not apply to correct the average spacecraft altitude change that occurred later in the extended ERBS mission. The main effect of this altitude change is a small increase (0.6%) in both TOA outgoing longwave (LW) radiation and reflected shortwave (SW) radiation over the 15-yr period."

So, the algorithm didn't take the decay into account - seems completely unlikely, but what's more unlikely is that the decay itself wouldn't have been noticed earlier. How could they not know the satellite was moving when altitude is a fundamental parameter of satellite navigation? If the altitude decreased it would have to be matched by an increase in orbital velocity to compensate for the increased gravitational attraction.

Surely NASA is aware of these issues. How much of a fool do they take us for? Navigation must record every relevant parameter and beam them back to base. They must have been aware of the decay in orbit.

Update 22 January 2009:

Using this orbit calulator the increase in tangential velocity required for a fall from 611 to 590km is 11.39 metres per second.

This extra velocity can be provided by the fall itself however it is complicated by the presence of a very slight atmosphere at that altitude. This will combine with gravity to decay the orbit and eventually bring the satellite crashing down to earth.

At 590 km the atmosphere will be e^(590/7) = 2.484exp-37 bars. This is 2.484exp-32 pascals.

On the 350 target

2010-01-16T14:15:00.050+10:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDubnFU3BXE

Apparently many persons in the environmental movement wish to cap CO2 at 350 parts per million in the earth's atmosphere. It is presently at 389ppm. They say it is at its highest level in 650,000 years. Well, as I discussed on my summary page humans are not causing the CO2 increase (item 1) and can not control it.

Places like Realclimate say a slight reduction in the ratio of C13 to C12 is a fossil fuel signature because some deposits of oil and gas has more C12 than C13 in its composition when compared with the standard atmospheric ratio. Therefore when hydrocarbon resources are burned it releases slightly more C12 than C13 and alters the ratio found in the air. An increase in C12 has accompanied the overall increase of CO2 in air. But as mentioned on my summary page the Russians and Ukrainians refute the claims of a uniform declination of dC13 in fossil reserves [1,2,3]. And Dr Roy Spencer has noted the distinct natural fingerprint on the Mauna Loa observations of CO2 rise and dC13 declination [1,2].

In the above two graphs first there is the inverse of the dC13 declination at Mauna Loa. Second is the natural rise in CO2 as measured at the remote Mauna Loa Hawaii location. Obviously the dC13 declination is not a fossil fuel signature but is highly correlated to the ocean CO2 signal measured at Mauna Loa. In other words the oceans are releasing the CO2 causing the recent rise from 1960 onwards. It may again go down.

Carbon dioxide in fact varies up and down naturally just like everything else - temperature, moisture, weather etc. It's all variable and it's all natural.

Random example of natural forcing: solar wind cycles. The following is the correlation of land temps to solar wind:

We are told that CO2 levels are at their highest for 650,000 years thus creating the basis on which to hang other claims such as CO2 causes the warming. Example of faked CO2 graph from Wiki:

Discussion of this graph on wiki file talk includes the astute observation: "It is a violation of basic scientific principles to combine, on the same graph, data collected from Hawaii on CO2 levels with levels collected from Ice Cores on the other side of the planet. Not only do these different measurements likely measure different data, but they are likely incompatible as measures of Global CO2."

It is just like when Michael Mann used his Nature trick of adding in real temps to the tree proxy temps where it suited to hide the decline.

In truth CO2 has been as high as 500ppm or 600ppm in more recent times before and during industrialisation.

These papers summarise the science:

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202008/Z_J_Climate_Report.pdf

http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/IceCoreSprg97.pdf

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/True_CO2_Record.pdf

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/Natural_Climate_Change.pdf

http://www.schillerinstitut.dk/what_makes_an_ice_age.pdf

http://www.biomind.de/nogreenhouse/daten/EE%2018-2_Beck.pdf

Due to effect of compression of ice, decay and the effect of boring it out Antarctic ice core proxies for past CO2 levels are distorted.

Zbigniew Jaworowski shows that CO2 levels have been not that different than today for thousands of years. He makes a statement to the US Senate in 2004:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

(also reprinted here: http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm)

Tim Ball describes it in journalistic form in the Canada Free Press here:

Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today

[1,2]

Another version of the third graph in Tim Balls article is here:

(full size)

P.S. Obviously I disagree with the 350 cause but I got a laugh when they actually managed to get that sticker on Lord Monckton's back without him noticing.

Global Warming Foundation 2 Update

2010-01-13T09:28:00.007+10:00

Thank you for your huge response to my Global Warming Foundation. One generous benefactor donated NZ$5,000. By the time that was converted to AU$40 I was still able to purchase new equipment to take pictures of my neighbours as part of my CO2 monitoring program.

If my neighbours take a shower one minute too long I report it to the council as an infraction. They may hate me but sometimes the path of an environmentalist is a lonely one. Their children will thank me one day for saving the planet from evil CO2 even if they do hate me now and call me the neighbourhood pervert. These are the sacrifices we make for the environment.

I caught two of my neighbours frolicking just the other day - I mean wasting water. The serious evidence here:

Seek, observe and record for later viewing is my Foundation's motto. Please give generously!

Global Warming Foundation

2010-01-08T09:22:00.039+10:00

Hi all, it was great conversing with you sceptic people. So many ideas and so much science. But recently I've made up my mind to see the light and come renounce my global warming scepticism.

So, alas, I'm afraid I won't be linking to scientific papers anymore. I won't be looking at contrary evidence. My new faith has made me realise these contrary opinions weren't peer reviewed. It was wrong for me to look outside the IPCC.

Ever since I've come to believe in the consensus I have started my own global warming foundation.

Please give generously as it is supported by readers like you. Memberships start for as little as $100. Through your generous support I can go round to people's houses and look at them. A lot of uneducated right wing people don't understand the need for this. I have applied for a permit as a UN inspector. Soon I will have powers to inspect homes in my community without a warrant. I have already started to look in neighbours windows and fill out charts and tables for their light usage and so on. If I see a jogger running I immediately record it in my log as a CO2 violation. Please support me in this work.

Suspicious activities, possible CO2 infringement, people doing stuff:

People leaving lights on, class 2 infringement:

Man driving truck trying to deliver food to people, class 3 infringement:

Chinese man smoking cigarette, creating CO2:

You too can be an ecowarrior such as by using new iPhone application ecosnoop. If you happen to be caught photographing your neighbours properties and they complain turn the tables on them by telling them you are reporting on their environmental infractions and the UN climate police will be around to deal with them shortly. Total dominance and force is the only way to deal with climate deniers, or as I like to call them, denialists. Everyone knows the climate is changing and to deny that is stupid and conservative and right wing.

One part of my mind says: "but just because it's climate change it doesn't mean it's human made." Ha! But that was the old me. I'm on a new path now. I've been corrected. Seen the error of my ways.

A path pioneered by George Soros, Maurice Strong, Ted Turner and John P Holdren. I'm on a new green path to peace. A world of peace cause there are a lot less people in it.

I am now an eco-warrior.

Now that I know that humans are the problem and not the cure - that humans are a cancer on the living Gaia - I know that it is time to eliminate them. I can't help it if your right wing ways blind you to the fact. Any educated person knows that population reduction is a must. For a long time now the population has been going unabated.

Just think about all those people reproducing without a licence or state control. They are not allowed to do that without our permission! Think about India. They are reproducing without state control. This is bad for the environment.

Compare them to China. In China there is a one child policy. Sure, many people get around it if they know how to bribe the right official, and poor people don't stand a chance. But that's where this whole global warming thing comes in handy for getting rid of human rights. Just like in China: when a poor person has one child they are sterilised. Both parents are immediately sterilised. Of course humans don't deserve rights when they are the guilty ones who have harmed the earth through carbon dioxide global warming. They exhale it the dirty buggers don't you know? Festy sinning poison exhaling humans. They are to be exterminated for their sins against mother earth. Wretched humans are unnatural. That is the lesson of Gaia capitalists don't understand. They will feel the power of the state one day mark my words. Death to all capitalists. Viva le New World Order. Seig heil la revolucion!

Others who had comment removed

2009-12-29T11:27:00.007+10:00

There were some other comments from that Guardian article also removed. Some are more innocuous than mine. They're civilised comments - just dissenting. Why were these removed?:

Update: I had a look at the Guardian posting policy and it's ambiguous enough to edit whatever they want. See here:

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated.

OK, so my post said: Mirror mirror on the wall who's that scariest scare monger of them all, re: Hansen? I guess that was a personal attack on the author, although it's fairly vague. I mean, where do you draw the line between dissent and insult?

2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics.

6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.

Point 6 I can agree with cause the UK has very strict libel laws.

censorshipRuss

27 Dec 2009, 8:35PM

The theory about CO2 and climate was a minor scientific hypothesis which was hijacked by many vested interests.

Mainly the oil companies (Carbon credits) and banks (Carbon trading).

lorenztl

27 Dec 2009, 8:16PM

CO2 is not a pollutant, however it is plant food. Without CO2 the earth would not be green!

In a June 23, 1988 testimony to Congress, "Dr Hansen writes "that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year."

"CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - it?s not a pollutant, it?s a product of every living creature?s breathing, it?s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it?s a product of all industrial burning, it?s a product of driving ? I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality." - Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
I always laugh when I read a newspaper article which expresses, "the experts are surprised" Why are experts surprised when computer models do not predict a correct outcome?

ngavc

27 Dec 2009, 7:51PM

Yes, people must make changes in the way they live.

Not until you guys face up to Phil Jone's attempts to hide missing source data, blacklist publications and dissenters, and FOIL freedom of information law requests. A full and complete investigation conducted by scientists most people trust with their lives (Like those employed by Exxon-Mobil) must be conducted immediately.

MAGB1

27 Dec 2009, 7:48PM

The theory about CO2 and climate was a minor scientific hypothesis which was hijacked by many vested interests. Among these, governments were interested in more taxes, and gaining trade advantage. Copenhagen has shown that the trade idea is dead. Fortunately, countries have to compete on tax, especially for corporations. So left-wing activists should lower their expectations that high carbon taxes will re-order society according their old-fashioned and discredited socialist ideas.

houlio

27 Dec 2009, 7:39PM

Thought i should mention that we have moved on - it was global warming, then it was climate change, it is now "climate instability." Please, we really need you all to keep up. We all need this change because the temp has not kept up with the models(it hasn't changed in 10 yrs) and we have too much invested in the theory too abandon it now.
Thankyou for your cooperation. You will have a place in our new world society
once we purge the malcontents.

WEREFEAT

27 Dec 2009, 7:26PM

The guy who wrote this article actually thinks that a world government is a good idea. And he thinks that humans are affecting the climate. Don't believe him for a second. None of that is true.

plaasjaapie

27 Dec 2009, 7:24PM

It does not speak well of the Guardian to publish the spewings of a known liar and fraud like Hansen.

noglobalwarming00

27 Dec 2009, 7:12PM

each time i read about M.M.G.W.
i'am reminded of the great quotation,
''IF YOU TELL A LIE BIG ENOUGH AND KEEP REPEATING IT,PEOPLE WILL COME TO BELIEVE IT''
thats how i feel about man made global warming and it gets repeated
all the time.

chiefwiley

27 Dec 2009, 6:58PM

Here's the solution.
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com/home.do;jsessionid=6869B3989EDDD9CB6D8F3B01A98B4043
FreeCarbonOffsets.com
Save the world with a simple download of a certificate. Indulgences and dispensations were never so simple before!

censorshipRuss

27 Dec 2009, 6:17PM

Hansen is nothing more than a gullible little rent boy for George Soros.

AntonyIndia

27 Dec 2009, 3:52AM

By the way, the graph above is another strange one, after the hockey sticks.
Developed countries are show separate, but developing countries are bundled together with "shipping and air". Looks misleading to me.

My post that was rejected on the Guardian

2009-12-28T15:55:00.007+10:00

Post on Guardian newspaper article from The Observer, Sunday 27 December 2009: Copenhagen has given us the chance to face climate change with honesty by James Hansen.

It happens a lot for me and I'm used to it. My recent post on James Hansen's article at the Guardian was removed by a moderator. I kind of expect it. I mean, I comply with the basic rules like no profanity or ad hominem attacks etc. But I think it's just too politically incorrect. In some cases I probably put myself up for libel under UK laws and perhaps the moderators are protecting me I don't know.

My last Guardian post mentioned that Prince Phillip co-founded the WWF and they are interested population reduction and it got removed. Or perhaps they're concerned about other things like all the links I make to references? Anyways here is the post:

CarbonFooledYa

27 Dec 2009, 10:42PM

James Hansen is a major researcher on the effects of aerosols and has stated that human made aerosols such as sulphates can reflect sun energy back into space offsetting global warming by more than 1C. Strange that there's no mention of this in this article. Hmm that is very peculiar, until you realise that Hansen has always vehemently promoted AGW. He says earth is heading for a tipping point and we've only got a few years left to act. Yet surely he is aware that the MWP was warmer than today with no tipping point - no Greenland ice sheet melt leading to Al Gore Waterworld (AGW). That ice sheet has survived 5 interglacials so far, but a few decades worth of warming is suddenly going to melt them? Wow, Prof Hansen, wow!

Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the scariest scare monger of them all?

There's a grotesque distortion in the article. The graph shows human "carbon" emissions (of course not elemental carbon but gases containing a carbon atom) but not natural emissions. It also ignores the number one greenhouse gas water vapour! If you include natural sources of carbon human contribution is only 2.33% of the whole. If you include water vapour and all else humans only contribute 0.28% of greenhouse gas.

Seeing as the transit time for CO2 in air is only a matter of years, not decades there is almost no remaining CO2 from human output decades ago, hence rich countries don't owe reparations to poor countries.

Just typing in Hansen to the East Anglia search engine...hmmm, 38 results, seems James Hansen is a major player in the hockey team. Seems every discussion they have of observed cooling it is regarded as a "problem". So, we're paying trillions to politicians to save us from a 2C rise but when climategate scientists discover cooling it's regarded a bad thing to be covered up. To wit, most environmentalists would be very sad and angry if you told them global warming was over. I guess without catastrophes they're nobody and it makes them mad and insecure.

@calmike 27 Dec 2009, 4:45AM. Well said. There is a technical solution to the energy crisis, but instead they're more interested on how they can get a clamp on the people. And to @hix1050 27 Dec 2009, 6:13AM as well. You've identified how much of a fake this worldwide AGW conspiracy is. It is nothing to do with science and everything to do with control.

Googlegate

2009-12-19T23:35:00.003+10:00

I load the front page of Googlenews many times a day every day. Even though the number of stories definitely warrants it climategate hasn't appeared on the front page once since the scandal broke. Is it being censored?

BBC: Anatomy of a Deception

2009-12-19T22:32:00.038+10:00

Take a look at this prime example of a propaganda piece from BBC scaring people into believing anthropogenic global warming:

Climate change: Copenhagen in graphics

24 November 2009, BBC

subtitle: "Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from?"

"Which countries are most responsible for causing human-induced climate change?"

They say "most" but it excludes natural sources of CO2. It's trick that most people will be unaware of. As I show in my summary page humans emit 26 billion tons of CO2 and nature 700 billion.

fig 1

So, nature emits 27 times more CO2 than humans but this crucial qualifying fact is swept under the rug by these charlatans. Here comes the first dodgy graphic:

fig 2

It contains a very clever device which would go unnoticed by many. This is a graph of CO2 "equivalent". Most will read it as just CO2 but the figure is boosted from 26 billion to 47 billion tons by assuming these following radiative potentials:

CO2 1

CH4 21

N2O 310

We emit a tiny amount of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) but taken as the CO2 equivalent it looks much scarier because it's multiplied by those values.

Next graphic:

fig 3

A total distortion cause they leave out natural sources of CO2, NH4, N2O, but most importantly: H2O, the number one greenhouse gas.

Here is the real proportion of greenhouse gas contribution including H2O (fig 4). But the BBC doesn't want you to know that cause the BBC has an agenda.

fig 4

Third graphic:

fig 5

Again, same trick as before. This pie chart is the breakdown of the sliver of 0.28% in fig 4. Now you see the scale of the deception. The BBC purposely ignores 99.72% of the greenhouse effect to achieve their objective.

With that put in context you can see how silly the rest of the article becomes.

This is an outrage but we know why it is so. In a guideline circulated June 2007, ironically titled "Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century" the BBC stated that they would no longer be presenting a fair and balanced assessment of AGW but would instead only promote the pro-AGW case. An excerpt from the BBC guidelines:

"The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus."

This is why we must now go to Russian TV for real news. The BBC is the new Pravda. But socialists love it. They love being owned and done over by the the Socialist New World Order. Greenies love being told what to do, cause it's for the "environment" don't you know?

The solution to climate change: voluntary reduction system.

2009-12-18T20:44:00.002+10:00

There are still about a third of people who believe in AGW. If all of them stop using electricity and eating most foods like meat, and stop showering etc (which shouldn't be too much of a concession for many of these sorts) it will reduce more greenhouse gas than a 20% reduction amongst everyone would. (With the caveat that their reduction in carbon footprint might be mitigated by their BO.) It all depends on their green religious conviction and willingness to rebel against the modern lifestyle. Of course law enforcement and security will have to be beefed up in case any of them get jealous of us sceptics as we continue with our normal way of life and drive around in even larger SUVs just to rub it in.

The real AGW agenda revealed

2009-12-18T17:51:00.008+10:00

Lord Monckton on the stop light of global warming: they call themselves green cause they're too yellow to admit they're red. See them at this Copenhagen rally here.

One of them is asked: "What do you think is causing climate change?" His answer: "I really don't know actually I'm not a scientist." Hah, hah, of course he doesn't know; it's not about the science. AGW is a political movement end of story.

See Hugo Chavez get applauded by the communistas at Copenhagen.

Australian article

Andrew Bolt blog

Chavez in Copenhagen

AHH, so anthropogenic global warming was about the political agenda and nothing to do with science after all.

Check out Lord Monckton

2009-12-16T17:18:00.006+10:00

Check out Lord Monckton interviewing this Greenpeace activist who trusts Greenpeace as a matter of faith but would have to verify everything Lord Monckton just told her.

Her first statement is "We're here...for the people who negate climate change." They really think that by paying their tax they can stop hurricanes, wind, storms, tidal waves and other things that they would, no doubt, classify as climate change. They literally think they can pay to stop bad weather. It's a type of insanity isn't it?

My Summary disproving AGW

2009-12-10T15:31:00.157+10:00

1) Humans are not causing the CO2 increase

Humans are not the likely cause of the steady increase in CO2 reflected in the upward Keeling Curve (see figure below) of the Mauna Loa observations. There is a dC13 carbon isotope ratio reduction often said by AGW believers to be a "fossil fuel signature". It is not. As you will see below fossil fuels aren't even from organic or "fossil" origins. The slight reduction in the carbon 13 isotope with respect to the carbon 12 isotope can be produced by many means. In fact, it has been statistically correlated to changes in the ocean produced by the El Nino effect:

Roy Spencer on how Oceans are Driving CO2

Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio

Increasing Atmospheric CO2: Manmade…or Natural?

An Example of the Little-Moron Logic & Mendacity of BOOP: The Carbon Isotope Ratio Nonsense.

Bristlecone dC13

Climate change is 'natural not man-made'

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/12/spencer-on-an-alternate-view-of-co2-increases/

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/22/a-look-at-human-co2-emissions-vs-ocean-absorption/

http://www.cgfi.org/2009/04/02/hemispheric-timing-shows-oceans-are-source-of-co2-by-dennis-t-avery/

So, it's not us but nature. Warmth, a change in ocean currents, solar cycles, changes in land use and in the biosphere can all affect changes in CO2.

2) Nature sources and sinks dwarf our output

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11638/dn11638-4_738.jpg

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html

The link above is sourced from the IPCC 2007 report which admits that 700 billion tons of gaseous carbon dioxide are produced and absorbed each year by nature, mostly in the biosphere. We emit 26 billion tons or 3.7% of what nature does (3.6% of the total).

3) The rate of CO2 increase is "unprecedented"

Using conversion ratio 7.7 gigatons = 1ppm CO2 air (Wiki page says there is 3,000Gt in air / 387 ppm = 7.75 Gt/ppm) the annual CO2 flux is 90ppm. If nature's sources of CO2 were turned off it would take 4 years for all the CO2 to be sucked from the atmosphere. I hope this puts in perspective the huge capability nature has to neutralise our CO2. Our emissions, estimated at 3.4ppm per year are just a bit player in this huge natural flux.

Consider this CO2 measurement from Mauna Loa (1, 2):

Note the huge seasonal variation of 6ppm - the seasonal squiggle (sawtooth waveform). Every northern winter sources outweigh sinks to produce a gain of 20ppm/yr for several months (centre of red circle). The yearly average increase of 2ppm is surpassed every northern winter by a factor of 10. It shows that nature is totally in charge of the CO2 content of the air. It can easily account for our puny 3.4ppm/year. Notions that nature is struggling to keep up with human CO2 are absurd.

And it's impossible to tell if the current yearly average increase is unprecedented because proxies for CO2 concentration such as dC13 can only be resolved in sediment samples to within a few thousand years (1).

Plus, I have heard Prof Ian Plimer say that the volcanic perturbations of CO2 are somehow "smoothed out" of the Mauna Loa "observations".

More posts on CO2 levels from me here and here.

4) The first 50 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere does the heating

In Defence of ‘Heaven and Earth’

CO2 in the Atmosphere is Decreasing - How Will the Global Warming Crowd Explain THAT? UPDATED

Climate change 'sceptic' Ian Plimer argues CO2 is not causing global warming

http://www.plantsneedco2.org

5) Global temperatures are level/declining

Dr Roy Spencer Latest Global Temperatures

One of the most amazing things to come out of this Climategate thing is that this line we've been fed that earth warmed over the 1900's appears to be totally falsified. E.g. the NZ temp record is fudged.

Real temperature of New Zealand:

AGW faked temperature of New Zealand:

And yes, I have heard of the explanation from them about the need to tweak every single station as a result of a location changes at two stations and my answer is: why not just treat each station as a separate station? Why the need for any combined stations at all? How can the application of a step function adjustment result in a gradual upward sloping? It makes no sense. It's a con job.

The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

RAW v ADJUSTED GHCN Data

New Study: Hadley Center and CRU Apparently Cherry-picked Russia’s Climate Data

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf

6) The oceans are not rising

Sea Level Graphs from UC and some perspectives

7) Antarctic glaciers are not melting

Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away

Sea ice extent:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

8) Himalayan glaciers are not melting

The glacier controversy

12 more glaciers that haven’t heard the news about global warming

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2010/02/18/12937041.html

http://www.smallgovtimes.com/2010/03/our-glaciers-are-growing-not-melting-more-falsehoods-from-al-gore/

9) Greenland ice cap is not melting

Global warming ‘hoax’ will waste billions

10) Floating north polar ice caps will not raise sea levels

See your local glass of water containing ice cubes.

11) Warmer temperatures will not result in higher sea levels

There is slight thermal expansion with warmth but a melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would be required to create any substantial rise and this would take thousands of years even if the air temp went up by 10C.

12) The Maldives are not sinking

They're building an awful lot of new resorts there for a place that's sinking.

Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise

Hear Swedish scientist Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner describe how Australian scientists tore down the tree which showed that the sea level in the Maldives hasn't risen for 50 years on the Alex Jones Show here.

13) Middle Ages warm period was 2 - 4C hotter than today

Grapes grown at Hadrian's Wall, farms in Greenland; it's an inconvenient truth Michael Mann tried to hide in his hockey stick graph.

14) 4.5 billion years of climate change and only now we are to blame?

The following graph is from The Paleomap project:

As you can see we are in a cool period now. And no worldwide death millions of years ago when the average temp was more than 10C warmer.

And these temperature proxy ice cores from Greenland and Vostok only go back 450,000 years but you get the idea - the temp goes up and down.

As you can see from the gradient of the small uptick at the end of the above graph (linked ice core one) - the recent blade of the hockey stick - the gradient of temperature increase is mild compared to past events. As also emphasised by this graph below (note this graph is flipped horizontally compared to the orientation in the previous link):

Above graph from here

Courtesy University of Texas

15) Mt Kilimanjaro is not warming

Global Warming and Mt. Kilimanjaro

Global Warming Not Behind Kilimanjaro Meltdown

16) The oceans are not acidifying

Acid in the Oceans Fraud

Global warming? Don't wait up! The Earth has her own tricks to keep the carbon count in control

Global Dynamic of Carbon Dioxide Production

The oceans can easily absorb any CO2 we produce.

17) The hurricanes are not increasing

Global Hurricane Intensity NOT Increasing

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/24/wmo-we-cannot-at-this-time-conclusively-identify-anthropogenic-signals-in-past-tropical-cyclone-data/

18) Outbound radiation increases with increasing surface temperature

Prof Richard Lindzen and Choi of MIT published a paper as recently as August of 2009 measuring changes in outbound radiation from earth as measured by the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite that outgoing radiation is keeping up with warming temperatures. The atmosphere is nowhere near as good as a glass panel on a greenhouse at trapping heat.

Consider that the moon's average temperature is -23C (-9.4F) - other estimates have it higher, like -10C, plus it varies by 6C from aphelion to perihelion, but it's a generalisation anyway cause in reality there is a dichotomy of -153C during the night to 107C during the day. Earth is 15C, or 38C warmer than the moon The entire earth atmosphere provides about 38C warming (on average). The IPCC says that an increase of 280 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, a doubling of pre-industrial levels, will produce 6C of warming. They expect us to believe a 7/25000 change in the atmosphere can produce 3/20 as much warming as the entire existing atmosphere! (Although nitrogen and oxygen provide no greenhouse heating, so it is a 19/2000 change in actual greenhouse gas (including H2O and CO2) for 3/20 as much heating.)

The ERBES experiment shows the warming for a doubling of CO2 is at most 1C. (This estimate concerns the ERBE data. Better estimates for CO2 warming suggest a doubling of CO2 won't produce any noticeable rise.)

Cooler Heads Lindzen talk

Slides for Cooler Heads

On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data

Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul

Slides accompanying Lord Monckton's lecture

Satellite and Climate Model Evidence Against Substantial Manmade Climate Change

Global Warming Not Caused By CO2

19) Water is a far more significant greenhouse gas than CO2

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Using the above link we produce about 0.28% of all greenhouse gases when water vapour is taken into account - not enough to sign our freedoms and liberties away for.

20) Tipping points such as "clathrate guns" are not present today

No evidence as such, but wouldn't this "gun" have gone off during the Medieval Warm Period if it existed?

Consider the above Paleomap temperature chart stretching back throughout 2 billion years of earth's history. You'll see it maxes out at about 25C average - 10C warmer than today. This shows a negative feedback, like a cap - a thermostat effect. This is the opposite of a tipping point so promoted by AGW fear mongers.

21) Even if we did have 1 - 2C warming it would be a good thing not a bad thing

Just like the Middle Ages warm period - a good time.

22) Drought in south Australia caused by Indian Ocean not global warming

Indian Ocean linked to Australian droughts

23) CO2 rise lags warmth, not leads

CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages

24) Tree rings are not a good proxy for temperature

Tree-o-mometers are useless (i.e tree ring temp proxy data) because cosmic radiation affects tree ring growth more than anything:

Cosmic pattern to UK tree growth

That's why Micheal Mann had a divergence problem. It's cause tree rings aren't even remotely a reliable temperature proxy, hence he used a trick to hide the decline by grafting on real temps where it suited.

25) The suns solar cycles affect cloud cover on earth

The Cloud Mystery 1/6

The Cloud Mystery

26) Fossil fuels are not even fossil fuels

They are produced continuously deep underground by the earth:

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT RECENT PREDICTIONS OF IMPENDING SHORTAGES OF PETROLEUM EVALUATED FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MODERN PETROLEUM SCIENCE.

Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connection for Natural Petroleum.

MEASURABLE C14 IN FOSSILIZED ORGANIC MATERIALS

27) "Scepticism is funded by big oil"

Take a look at this page with all the pigs lining up at the trough of global warming.

U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)

Update 17 Feb 2010: BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar have now pulled out of the US-CAP as it collapses due to climategate and the whole climate fraud being revealed daily.

Shell oil is still in at this point, one of the companies who funds CRU. The CRU was started with funding by Shell and BP. See this article and in particular the 5th comment by "Andrew" which says:

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK was set up in 1971 with funding from Shell and BP as is described in the book: The History of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, page 285, by Michael Sanderson. The CRU was still being funded in 2008 by Shell, BP, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex LTD (the nuclear waste disposals people in the UK).

28) Well then what is causing global warming?

On a macro scale the Milankovitch cycles control warming and cooling cycles of the ice ages, but what of shorter term changes? Could sun changes be responsible? Maybe. Could ocean changes be responsible? Probably. Could land use changes be responsible? Yes, certainly. An Australian physicist John Daly took the time to calculate the temperature anomaly and by excluding any measurement stations that were subject to the urban heat island effect he discovered no warming trend in the United States at all. Clearing the forest and building cities creates a local heating effect. So, yes anthropogenic warming is real but it's fairly local and not global.

29) Coral reefs not bleaching

Scientists 'crying wolf' over coral

Errata:

28 Dec 2009, Hi folks, I have made a few minor corrections/updates to this page such as (sections):

7) Thought was link to Antarctic land ice but it was sea ice. I have found some land-related data here which I may include later.

14) The link to the Greenland ice core also has Vostok ice core data, I didn't realise.

18) Lindzen says is it 1C at most for a doubling of CO2 (purely based on ERBS data). In an earlier doc of his Lord Monckton he says 1F not 1C but I think he later revised it to Lindzens estimate of 1C. In any case it would be much less than either of these.

19) Reverted to the original source's calculation - mine was out.

2009-07-10T03:27:00.004+10:00

Peter Garrett and National Parks Australia to ban climbing of Uluru

This will be a huge blow for Australian tourism - an own goal.

I don't when or why Australia started going down this whole political-correctness-gone-mad route but it's got me irked. Giving a blank cheque to one group under the guise of "respect for culture" is not always useful. This ban could in fact be a setback for the political cause of Aboriginal people.

Supporters of the ban have equated the rock to a European church or the Wailing Wall. They say: "Would you let people climb all over the Notre Dame or the Sistine Chapel?" They've left their logic at the door. A church is a building. It was built by humans for a purpose sacred to them on freehold land. It has an interior. No-one is expected to scale the outside of a building with grappling wires - sacred or not. A building is also temporary. It lasts maybe a few hundred years if you're lucky and then the function ends with the building. A rock is handed down by nature and lasts for thousands or millions of years. Who owns that? Past Aborigines had the most sensible answer: no-one. But their present day descendants have changed the rules for their own ends.

Supporters of the ban also cite tourists peeing and pooing on the rock. According to our modern culture it's uncivilised but in biological terms it's surely no worse than excrement from animals. Are we going to put a huge dome over the top to stop birds and lizards from peeing and pooing on it? No.

Beyond Thunderdome: Poo Dome

2006-10-14T16:08:00.001+10:00

Molten metal is the fatal flaw

My little contribution to the theory on the 9-11 controlled demolition plan - the false-flag terror attacks on America - is that there was one key aspect which failed them, the planners. The blasts in the basement were designed to bring the rubble below the level of the water and the slurry walls were meant to give way giving rise to an incredible steam causing further havoc and rapidly cooling the molten metal caused by the hot thermite reaction, and thus, further destroying the evidence.

2006-10-11T07:27:00.001+10:00

I had a problem with the dvico pro fusionhdtv tv capture card for Australia not showing every channel in the list, such as for scheduled recorder, despite being able to tune the channel. I apparently solved this problem by deleting all channels and manually putting in each channel instead of using the autoscan funcion. I just bought this card new and it has had glitches in the software and access violations and I've had to reinstall the software from scratch to fix problems several times. :(

2006-10-03T05:16:00.001+10:00

Project for a new American Century involvement in 9-11

Dick Cheney takes the main responsibility for it. I mean, the guy shot his lawyer at close range, so he could do something like 9/11. In that he seemed above the law and investigation, by the way. He seemed to get a secret pardon. Anyway, Cheney seems not long for this world to me, so it's a good person to take the lead for the actual 9-11 events by taking control of NORAD for a terrorist attack simulation. Of course, military people are sworn to secrecy about operations, so they couldn't say that there was this "bizarre simulation" and the standing down of NORAD on the day of 9/11 with Cheney taking over the authority to shoot down planes in US air space and so on.

If they did it once they'll do it again! Listen to Alex Jones at the GCNlive.com Network.

2006-09-25T05:45:00.001+10:00

The other thing I want to contribute is that the fuses were probably triggered by remote control. Radio fuses were available at that time. A high vantage point for the source of the radio waves is desirous so as to penetrate down the columns of the core of the building. There is evidence for "US military helicopters", as one witness describes it, circling the World Trade Centre in the first 15 minutes of this video:

Google video TM

Radio waves can not penetrate metal but can go around it. However, every time it does so the wave is scattered. Having several helicopters transmitting the same signal simultaneously from all around the building is ideal for an explosive demolition such as this type, by increasing the penetration and redundancy. If any part of the building failed to detonate properly there would have been a costly and hasty re-demolition effort in which the existing charges could have been discovered. Radio fuses have no wires to be threatened by other parts of the falling building so they're better, plus, they're a lot quicker to install! This explains why they only needed that two-day "power down", the weekend before, to install the charges in the World Trade Centre towers.

The above video shows a lot of helicopter activity. A perfect vantage point to perform your murder - with military precision, and a perfect get-away!

2006-09-25T03:15:00.001+10:00

Thing I noticed about the 9-11 controlled demolition

I hadn't noticed anyone making a big deal out of this so, my contribution to the 9-11 truth movement is to point out that a significant portion of the aluminium siding on one side of the North Tower stays up for about 10 seconds before collapsing. This shows to me both how strong the buildings were and how the floors just peeled away from the wall as if severed. They didn't "pancake" which should have pulled the siding and the walls down with it. In a video on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5kF9ldtgrc

you can see it standing from 6:47 to 6:57.